After dinner (rice, salt fish, sweet potato), they sang or read. Sometimes, there’d be a discussion before bedtime. Topics were proposed, then debated if there was sufficient interest. Was smoking tobacco ideologically sound? Would the non-Chinese have a place in Soviet Malaya? What were the lessons of the Emergency? The atmosphere was feverish. Anything could be said at these times. Rumours and complaints were damaging when covert, and murmuring was severely dealt with—but here, in the open, even the leaders could be criticised in the harshest terms. Why, Lenin himself could be questioned. The leadership was only temporary, after all, and would be dismissed after the revolution. Openness and transparency was all.

Some nights, there would be the special treat of a concert. Any excuse, any Soviet or Chinese festival, would see them rigging up a stage from tables and blankets. Food was a little more plentiful on these occasions, and the day would be given over to rehearsing. More girls in pigtails harmonising prettily, more revolutionary heroes thwarting the plans of vicious imperialists. They always finished with sponge cake, steamed over the camp fire, and the rousing “Internationale”.

A whistle blew at nine, and the lamps were put out, though a fire burnt through the night to keep wild animals away. Xiongmin found himself exhausted at the end of each day, his hands callused from the unaccustomed work. He missed the moments of forgetfulness at the workshop, for it seemed that in the jungle all should be focused on revolution, every action examined for its correctness. But that was as it should be, the only way to change the world. He was committed to this new, aware way of living. Lying on his canvas bed, listening to the mysterious noises of the jungle, hooting, clicking, the warm breath of wind through the vast overhead canopy, he tried not to think of his old life. Look forward, he chided himself, think of the world to come.

•

The first killing was unexpected. The scouts had found no enemy activity, and there’d been no surveillance planes—not that they’d have been able to see through the thick treetops to the camp anyway. They were safe, in their closed world. Xiongmin took pleasure in the simple rhythms of their routines, sometimes even forgetting that this struggle meant something in the world outside.