He could tell from the dull look in the Australian’s eyes that the allusion to ‘spats’ was lost on him.
Sharkey wiped his brow. Could I do with an ice-cold beer or even two while I’m about it? It’s that hot! By mid-March Calcutta had started to heat up during the day.
‘Tell you what, Mr Dutt,’ said Sharkey, armpits of his shirt dark and damp. ‘I don’t know about you but I could do with, in fact, desperately need, a glass of ice-cold beer I’m that thirsty.’
‘Then your luck’s out, my friend, I fear. Everywhere in Bengal, in the whole of India come to that, except in registered places, is dry. Nothing hard and no beer. Sorry,’ waggling his head.
Sharkey just couldn’t believe his ears. ‘You’re not joking, are you?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No, indeed I am not.’ Mr Dutt saw a look of anguish on the Australian’s face. ‘You’ll have to be content with a cup of tea or a squash while you’re here but if you book in at the Great Eastern Hotel as a foreigner, you can drink all you want with a doctor’s certificate as a certified alcoholic,’ and may your Christian God, if you as a dedicated Communist even have one, have mercy on your liver as well as on your soul.
While Sharkey was booking in, Mr Bugga espied Padamsing Rai coming down the stairs. With him was an odd, elemental, narrow-shouldered, long-necked Chinese man, slightly stooped with a worried look on his deeply pockmarked face that had a mouth as thin and cruel as a well-healed knife wound. Padamsing brought him over and introduced him, nameless, merely as a guest of Lee Soong. Although his English was good, he had few words to say. When he spoke, his voice sounded like fingernails being drawn down a blackboard. No one had any idea he was a member of the Chinese Security Service, the Kwok Ka On Chuin Bo.
***
The representative of the MGB had contacted the senior member of each group individually, given him to understand that there would be a channel for future work between the pair of them. No details were yet ready but, after the conference was over, each one was assured that, even without his knowing of it, contact, two-way if necessary, would be established over the coming months. Code names would be issued and used. The impression given was that each person was the only one to be contacted. However, in case of that one becoming a casualty, a stand-by would have to be detailed. Although it would probably be impossible to keep all this an absolute secret, if and when its existence became known, it would add to the mystique of an unplaced mystery. Not said was that the location of the Soviet controller would only ever be made known to a strictly limited group of the already indoctrinated and then its real task would always be disguised as, for instance, a normal Soviet consulate.
Soviet planning, though strict, was often shoddy. In this case the representative from Malaya was not told about such an arrangement but, in the manner of such secrets, vague details leaked out over the coming years. The Soviet planners, all in fact Russian, emphasised that the one common thread running through all the colonial powers, including the Japanese in the late war, but not quite so much in the case of the British, was thinking that they were superior in almost every aspect than the people over whom they ruled. It was ironic that the Russians themselves were probably the most ‘racist’ of all.
***
The conference programme included sessions for those already fighting their colonial masters, the Indonesians and Indo-Chinese, who would be asked to address the meeting. Language had become a bigger, much bigger, problem that had been considered initially when planning the conference. Stupidly, or perhaps arrogantly, the Russian advisors had presumed that the language would be either English or Hindi, quite forgetting that delegates from Indo-China would not know English but French and, likewise, those from the Dutch colony wouldn’t know either but, presumably, Dutch. Getting an interpreter for both languages had been a problem but had been overcome by finding, after great difficulty, one of each language in Calcutta – but the expense!
The two delegates from the Dutch colony were splutteringly annoyed when their country of origin was put on the list of delegates as ‘Dutch East Indies’. As soon as the war had finished in August 1945 the commander of the Nippon forces in the area, the 16th Army, Major General Nagano, on orders from Tokyo, had ordered that the occupying troops hand the country back to the inhabitants as the Republic of Indonesia. None of the conference planners had realised this, so hackles had unwittingly been ruffled. The journey to Calcutta had been fraught as well as being difficult to arrange and both delegates, Akbar Salleh and Atmaji Anugerah, felt that their presence had been taken too lightly.
‘Which one of the Indonesian delegates would like to address the meeting?’
Atmaji Anugerah put his hand up and walked to the rostrum. He was a tall man with a mean face and a wispy black beard, hard eyes and, in all, a commanding presence. The interpreter joined him.
‘Comrades, I come from Java. From what I have heard so far, I am inclined to think that the organisers of this conference have never been in as difficult a struggle as we have, since during the war and until now’ he began. There was a stir of interest and of uneasiness in the hall. Hadn’t they all suffered, indeed from childhood, by dominating colonial masters? What was this man getting at? ‘The Dutch regarded us natives as their permanent servants. They came and most of them spent their whole lives in our country. I gather that, here in India, the British came to work then mostly returned to their home country and in Indo-China most French likewise. Bad though they were, they were never the arrogant, inflexible and often cruel masters as the Dutch were, or tried to be, over us, making money for themselves with never a thought for us.’
Heads in the audience nodded. Whether or not the Dutch were worse or just as bad as the English or the French was not to be argued, they had all suffered in one way or another: that those who had not suffered in any way but who had prospered were, obviously, not in the lecture hall, nor would have been invited to the conference in the first place.
Atmaji Anugerah went on with his talk: ‘The Dutch army in Java surrendered to the Nippons,’ a name strange to the others, ‘after only nine days fighting so useless were they. We Indonesians suffered under the Nippons but they made our youth, I among them, into a Fatherland Defence Force and we were known as Pemuda – Youths – by the Nippons and Indonesians alike. We went into action by ourselves. We were formed into battalions and companies, and armed, drilled, exercised by the Nippons and then went into action on our own. Yes, we worked as an army. We were the army. All the Dutch people that the Nippons had interned when they invaded in 1942 were kept in their camps on a short diet with purposely limited medical supplies. This pleased us considerably as it was their turn to suffer.’ He stopped talking and his eyes took on a look that told his listeners that his mind was back in his home country, gloating. After a significant pause he pulled himself back from infinity and continued. ‘One day, in the August of 1945, we discovered that a 4-man recce group, with one of them being from the nearest village and who had escaped in 1942, had been brought to our shores in a submarine. They were landed not far from my village, a place called Subah, about halfway between Semarang and Batavia, now known as Jakarta. We were told that in Batavia there were signs saying “The Nippons must go. We are hungry”. We had no idea the recce group had come until one small detail gave their presence away. The man who had left Java in 1942 went to a farmer who was working in his fields and offered him some money for information.
‘He also brought some food, including palm oil, with him. We were short of food and the farmer took the stranger to his nearby shack and, with the palm oil, cooked a meal with the food he had been given none had eaten for a few years: tempeh, deep-fried, fermented soya beans and bakwan, vegetable fritters. Even krupuk udang, prawn crackers. Where the man from the submarine had brought the uncooked stuff from the farmer never found out and knew better than to ask.
‘The money he gave to the farmer was not rupiahs that had come into circulation under the Nippons but a brand new, crisp guilder, one with palm trees and mountains with the head of the Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, on one side and on the other the crest of the Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank, something we had not seen since pre-war. That just shows you can’t be too careful in every aspect, however small, that comes your way.
‘Without thinking anything of it, the farmer took the pre-war money to the market to buy some paraffin but the shop keeper, who was a sympathiser of ours, asked him how he got it, so unusual was it, so suspicious was he. The farmer told him. Why should he hide it as the man who gave it to him said he had been born in the village but had moved out when still a boy? The shop keeper handed the note to the Nippons. Why? As it was so unusual, he would have been closely asked about how he got it if it had been found in his possession. He dared not keep it. It was dangerous as it had to mean something not allowed. The Nippons ordered us Pemudas to search and yes, our whole battalion, hunted for them and after two days we found two of them, killed one and captured the other.’ A thrill went through his audience as his voice slid along each nerve in his listeners’ bodies. This was an exciting story, showing resolved, tenacity and courage.
‘The prisoner told us about the submarine and we learnt they were Australians. Why so few? To look for friends, which could only mean more invaders were coming. The Nippons were worried. But before the invaders came the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and the war ended. That meant the Nippons had to go back to their country but nobody knew quite when.’
He looked around, seeing how his audience was taking his talk, sensing they were with him. He scratched an itch in his nose and continued.
‘The Nippons had let us fly our red and white national flag since September 1944. They were stern. They had two types of punishments, for “combat insurgency”, or as they called it genchi shobun, on-the-spot-punishment, and genju shobun, punishment by law. They handed the defence of the country over to us and at the same time we became the Republic of Indonesia. The Dutch internees were still kept in their camps. They didn’t concern us. However, the leader of the 4-man groups came to visit the Nippons and us also, claiming that he had come to let the Dutch prisoners free.’ He shook his head. ‘In no way did we allow it. We did not apprehend the one remaining Australian because it was now peace time and he was not Dutch. We were in charge and some of the Nippons took our side and some took the Australian’s. That meant battles between them and us and, curse them, rival groups and us, that left so many dead we couldn’t count them, not that it mattered, the more the better because anyone not wanting to fight properly for his own country was better dead. The battle for men’s souls, often invisible, is always relentless.’ These sombre words affected everyone listening.
‘The Nippons who taught us most were the Kempeitai, the military police you could call them.’ Yes, everybody in the room knew all about the dreaded Kempeitai, the Nippons’ special service for political surveillance. ‘They were not under the command of any officer in Java as they were directly under their own boss in Tokyo. The man in charge of our lot was like the Indonesian dalang puppet master. They knew what they wanted and how to get it. Because the imperialists were still in internment camps and could not get out, some of the wasters of our society began to live in a way that was disgraceful. The lieutenant in charge of the Kempeitai cleared out all the rubbish, the opium users, the whores, the swindlers and such like. Killed them all. There was no trouble after that. That taught us what to do to the Dutch people in the prison camps. Kill them, either by letting them starve, letting them have no medicines or shooting them.
‘The Australian came to see us and begged us to help the prisoners, especially the women and children. No, never. That way they would never come back to take over our country.’
‘What about weapons and transport?’ someone asked him.
Atmaji Anugerah laughed derisively. ‘We used Japanese armoured vehicles, small arms weapons, artillery and tanks.’
‘Your Pemudas could manage all that by yourselves?’ asked almost disbelievingly.
That brought Atmaji Anugerah down to earth. He shook his head. ‘No, not to start with. But we had some older people who had been in the Dutch army and some of the Nippons helped us. The civilians were afraid of us and obeyed us instantly, but only when we were united. We did have another way of dealing with those who came silently to ravish our women.’ Again this drew everyone’s attention and the speaker’s self-confidence returned. ‘I’ll tell you about one incident, in brief: a man, just a poor farmer, who wanted to kill two Nippons, Kempeitai they were, who had barged into his house and had started to rape his daughter. Near his house was some jungle. Even though it was dark, he had to take his revenge, there and then. He groped his way to where lengths of young bamboo and bundles of strip-like ties were stacked ready for thatching work. Feeling for a bamboo the right length and thickness, pushing quietly with his blade rather than chopping, he trimmed the slender end to a sharp point. It was only a short distance from his house where he knew an alert sentry would be sitting while the Nippons were doing their worst to his daughter. The wind was gusting from the south, carrying away any slight noise. Taking half a dozen of the ties, carrying his impromptu spear butt-forward, the angry father set off on the most difficult stage of his task so far: getting through to the top end of the timber path unheard and unseen.’
By now his listeners were agog. Would the man he successful?
‘Traversing the undergrowth silently took nearly half an hour, and on reaching his chosen spot just short of the clearing, grey light was showing. There wasn’t much time, but at least he could see to work.
‘Among secondary thickets stood saplings up to a dozen feet tall, strong and whippy, perfect for his purpose. Choosing one growing an arm’s length in from the path he tied his rope round it as high as he could reach, hauled it back with all his strength and secured it to a stump, using a slip-knot with a long trailing end. Next he lashed the butt of his spear to the sapling at chest height, resting the point in a loop of bamboo strip hung from a small tree by the path, to guide it forward and slightly down. Placing a fern frond on the path as a natural-looking mark, he led the trailing rope back and squatted to wait – till in the strengthening light a problem became frighteningly apparent. Even at walking speed a fraction of a second early or late and his spear would miss, split-second timing was crucial. Desperately he looked about: how on earth could he induce the lead man to slow down, even pause, opposite the spear? Faint vibrations trembled from two sets of feet padding confidently on the path, a voice grunted something, another replied. The rapists were leaving the house. His daughter had stopped screaming. He could just hear her moaning. He darted out, dropped his old, faded hat some yards beyond the fern frond and dashed back again, heart pounding so heavily he feared they must surely hear the drumbeats in his chest. Crêpe-soled boots padded closer, clothing brushed against lantana stems with tiny tearing sounds, the first figure loomed – and stopped. It was the elder of the two, shot gun tucked under his right arm, his companion a yard behind. Cropped head thrust forward as he studied the hat, the front man took a single cautious pace forward, paused, took another, and his trousered leg obscured the mark. The girl’s father pulled gently on the rope.’
The narrator could now feel the intensity of the audience’s interest.
‘Swish-thump! The sapling sprang quivering upright.
‘The second Nippon jerked back – then leapt to help the man transfixed in front of him. He was struggling to prise him free when the father emerged from behind and his parang blow split his head open.’
The audience cheered and clapped.
‘Stuck fast, the wounded Nippon crouched leaning to the right, both hands gripping the haft pierced deep into his side. As the ravished girl’s father moved round him, he raised his eyes and again he felt a clutch of dread: so might a neck-pinioned cobra, tail lashing but head held rigid, fix him with just such a deadly stare – then cold rage took over. The girl’s father showed the wounded Nippon the parang blade, blood-stained. The eyes looked down at it then back up at him, crinkling a moment as if puzzled and taking deliberate aim chopped off the Nippon’s right hand. Grip gone he sagged, and the father began to hack at him, gasping great sobs as he swung the heavy blade at arms and shoulder and neck and face till all that remained was a gory trunk still with the spear in it.
‘So, that is how an ordinary farmer got his revenge by taking action when he could.’
The speaker, hoarse from talking, took a drink of water.
