‘I am glad to see a Chinese doctor. The one who came this morning was a Kling devil, an Indian.’
‘It is all the same.’
‘I wanted to be a doctor, but my family was killed by the Japanese devils. I was saved by an uncle who took me to the jungle. I was Inside for four years.’
‘Why did you go back to the jungle this time?’
His voice was very weak, interrupted by sighs as his breathing became more shallow.
‘The Japanese went, the British came. I could not get any schooling. They said I was too old. I could never be anything but a coolie, all my life. My friends were all Inside. Those that had come out were going back. There was no way out for them. There was no other way for me. I went back Inside.’
I could not answer him. He was only repeating what many of the young had already said: that there was no door to the future for them, save through the green mouth of the jungle.
‘Once we have thrown the British out, we can be free, I can be a doctor,’ he said.
‘But it is wrong to kill and murder, don’t you see?’
He did not reply. When he spoke again, he had wandered to something else.
‘We were four comrades the day we went Inside again. We took a taxi from Singapore. We came to Johore Bahru in the taxi. We sang songs all the way. The driver was one of our People.
‘I remember how we arrived too early at our meeting place. The man we were to meet wasn’t there. So we went to the zoo for an hour.
‘Monkeys, tigers, lions, elephants, parrots and peacocks and crocodiles. All in cages. Only man could be free. I felt as if I too had been behind wire, like an animal, but now I stood on the edge of freedom. When we liberate Johore Bahru, I thought, I will go to the zoo again and open all the cages.’
‘When you were Inside, old brother,’ I said, ‘what then? Did you get the freedom you wanted? Did you come nearer to being a doctor?’
There was no answer. His eyes widened suddenly, yet he appeared to go to sleep. After a while he stopped breathing. ‘Mampus,’ said the attendant, and the policeman on guard assented with a flickering smile.
We left the dead young terrorist and passed the hardened case on our way out. He stared at us again, the fixed contempt on his face unchanged.
- Sakit: ill or sick in Malay. ↵
3
SHADES IN THE PITILESS RAIN
Neo turned with care and lifted his body on an outstretched right hand. His daughter and son slept between him and his wife on the mat-covered wood planking, the family bed. Through cracks in the plywood walls of the hut a lighter darkness seeped.