Pulau Brani
Stephanie Scott
I was playing in the garden when I heard him, the street seller with his tricycle. The
pedals creaked as he moved slowly towards the governor’s house. “Kachang,” he
called “Ice Kachang!” He weaved into view and I glimpsed the box in front of him,
filled with buckets of sawdust, and beneath the sawdust, ice.
Kachang was forbidden to boys like me. It was forbidden to the Malay and
Chinese children as well, those that came from the houses and not the kampongs.
The kachang was contaminated, my amah told me: “Bad ice. You get sick.”
The seller stopped his tricycle in front of me; the ice gleamed as it caught the
sun, beside it, pooling red in a metal can, was the syrup. “Kachang, ten cent. Beli
Sekarang!” I looked at him; the wooden sword with which I had been fighting my
mother’s begonias hung by my side.
If I had been older, I would have paid attention to the sores on his feet, the
yellow toe nails curled against blackened skin. I would have understood the gaps in
his mouth where he’d melted down the fillings for dollars, but it was 1946 and I was a
child; a child who wanted ice cream.
The seller caught me staring: “Datang. Come, little master, come.”
He
beckoned to me and I glanced towards the house. Minah, our amah, was nowhere to
be seen. Mother had retired for her nap. My mother, peaceful in sleep, was a
frightening woman when awake and I did not want to wake her. The ice sparkled
through the gaps in the sawdust. Kachang, just one bowl.
I gestured for the man to wait and ran into the house. Mother’s handbag was on
the table near the door, inside was the pocket of Chinese silk in which she kept her
change. Glancing at the bedroom where the mosquito netting floated beneath the
ceiling fan, I raided the purse.
I ran towards the ice kachang, a crisp five dollar note folded in my palm. The
seller was grinning as I reached him, stale breath in my face. “Well, bayi, red one or
green one?” He gestured to the cans of syrup beside the ice.
“Red, please,” I said. I wanted to be polite.
The seller laughed and pulled the bucket of ice towards him. He picked the ice
out of the bucket and sloughed off the sawdust in water, grating the ice into a bowl
and hollowing out a space for the red beans and nuts.
“Red, yes?”
I nodded. “Red good colour, very Eng-lish colour,” he said, picking up a ladle
and drizzling the syrup, thick and sweet, over the ice.
“10 cents, sir?” I said holding out my note. He handed me the change, placing
the coins in the flat of my palm. “That alright?” he said. I looked at my palm and
nodded.
Counting was not my strong suit, even then.
*
In a corner of the garden, where the lawn turned into jungle, was a bougainvillea
bush. This one was hollow in the middle, like a cave.
Holding the ice in one hand, I crawled within and sat beneath the arching green
leaves and purple flowers with their tiny white stamens. Even on the hottest of days,
the ground inside the bush was cool and damp. I wriggled, spreading stains on my
shorts and dug into the bowl.
The syrup was tangy and sharp. Pieces of jelly mingled with the ice and I
murmured in delight as they roamed, sweet and slippery, over my tongue. A few
minutes later, I heard footsteps. I leaned towards the entrance of my cave and a
new pair of feet appeared before me, framed between the leaves. These feet, in their
wooden sandals, were clean, the nails trimmed. After a moment, they were gone and
replaced by two black almond eyes and a flat face. The man’s hair had been shaved
to rid him of lice. He wore the patched cotton trousers and shirt of all the men
stripped of their uniforms; he wore the white of a prisoner of war.
The man bowed to me, he worked in our garden. “Sukoshi masutā, you must
come to the house now, your mother is awake.” He looked at me more closely.
“What have you been eating?” I smiled and swung my head from side to side.
“Kachang? Did you buy the Kachang?” My glee overcame me and I giggled. “How?”
I pointed to the coins which lay forgotten on the ground. The gardener followed my
finger and his eyes widened.
“We must put these back,” he said. “Come, come. Quick, quick!”
He took me by the hand and led me out of the cave. We ran to a hose at the
side of the house. The sun was a shock after the coolness of the bougainvillea and I
was beginning to feel sick. I barely noticed as the gardener wiped the syrup from my
face, wetting my shirt, I was thinking of mother. He sneaked a look at me. “Was it
good?” he asked with a small smile. I nodded and we laughed together.
Inside, the gardener replaced the coins in mother’s purse. It was then that
Minah saw him. She ran down the corridor towards us. “Get away from him,” she
hissed. “You filthy Jap! Pembunuh. Anda layak untuk mati.”
Years later, I still hear her words in my mind; words whispered in the kampongs
at the sight of the Japanese: Pembunuh. Killer. Untuk mati, deserving of death.
The gardener looked at Minah and as he did, I saw him straighten, no longer a
hobbling servant. Slowly, he bowed to her and they stared at one another.
“Roger, ah, you are so naughty. Look at you, all wet. Come, come.” She
grabbed my hand and hustled me into my room.
“We must get you changed for dinner.” She calmed as she undid the buttons of
my shirt and lifted it over my head. Then she smiled at me, my nanny again. “Little
gentleman, let’s dress for dinner.”
*
I was still standing in my shorts when we heard a call from the living room.
“Minah, did you go to the mainland today?”
My amah walked into the hallway. I followed her and took her hand.
“No Puan.”
“There was a five dollar note in my purse. Where is it?”
Mother advanced on the girl and her grip on my hand tightened.
“Did you take it?”
Mother was close now; Minah stood very still.
“Where is it?”
“I took it Mummy!”
Eyes, pale and blue, shifted to me. “You took it, Roger?”
“Yes,” I piped up. “It was very hot you see, and, I took it… I took it for the ice
kachang.”
“You bought ice kachang?”
I nodded, thinking of the ice, the water sickness that could lurk inside it.
“How much is an ice kachang, Roger?”
“Ten cents,” I said proudly
“And how much change should you get for five dollars?” She was kneeling in
front of me; I could smell her face powder, flowers over porcelain skin.
“The change is in your purse, Mummy.”
She smiled at me; her eyes, pale and blue, like mine.
*
Mother stood as father appeared in the hallway, his Royal Anglian fatigues long
faded from the sun. The house boy hovered with a glass of whisky on a silver tray.
Father looked at the iced cubes clinking softly in their amber liquid, while mother
whispered in his ear. After a few moments she shrugged and together they turned
towards me.
“Father,” I stammered as he took hold of my arm, his fingers spanned my bicep
and lifted me from the room.
I remember that Minah stepped forward, “Tuan, please.”
I was screaming as I stumbled; my shoes slipping across the marble floor. I
stamped desperately trying to glue myself to something, anything, outside my
father’s study. Inside the air was cool; cotton curtains drifted against the breeze. In a
corner beside the maps of Singapore and the tiny island of Pulau Brani on her coast,
was the cane.
Father pushed me over the desk. Mother came in quietly and shut the door.
The thin strip of bamboo whistled through the air and I felt it then, slicing into my
skin.
*
I awoke in the dark. The syrup of the afternoon had gone sour in my mouth. I had
been sick. This only added to my shame. As I breathed in and out in the darkness, I
heard footsteps, without slippers, edging towards the open French doors of my room,
doors that led outside to the garden. A man stood silhouetted in the moonlight.
“Hello little master, much pain, uh?”
I lifted my head as the gardener tip-toed into the room.
“Here, look what I have for you.”
Movement was painful, so I lay still on the pillows and he sat on the floor beside
me. He held up my sword, the one I had been playing with in the garden, the last
present Uncle Bert had made for me before going to war.
“A soldier must always have his sword,” he said. “Come, let me see, I have
some cloths.”
The water stung me as it covered the welts on my skin, but gradually it seemed
to cool them, sucking out the heat.
“You have a nice sword,” he said “who made it for you? Your father?”
“My uncle,” I mumbled. “He carved our initials into the hilt, see?” I pointed to the
curved letters intertwined in the wood.
“Where is he now?”
“Fighting the Japs. He will come home soon, now it’s all over.”
The gardener laughed a little and I bristled.
“He is coming home and when he does we will be together again. He will see I
have looked after our sword.”
The traces of a smile lingered around the gardener’s mouth.
“Is that funny?” I asked. “I don’t see anything funny.”
“No, little master.”
“Then why were you laughing?”
“Because I am Japanese.”
“You have been defeated,” I said. “That is why you are working in our garden.”
He smiled again. “Yes, it happens to us all.”
*
Father stood behind his desk, looking at the patrol schedule; he was issuing
instructions to his aide.
“Sir,” I said. “I have come to apologise.”
“Good, Roger.” He looked at me and cleared his throat. “Work on your
arithmetic.” He had returned to his aide when I stammered.
“W- When is Uncle Bert coming home?”
Father looked at the charts in front of him and then at the man by his side. They
shared a look that I would later understand.
“He’s not.”
“He’s gone back to England?” I asked
“He’s dead, boy,” Father sighed. “Killed by the Japs in Thailand.”
“The Japanese?”
“Yes.”
Father did not tell me everything then; there were some things he thought a
child shouldn’t hear. But later, I learnt that my uncle had not died fighting the Japs.
He had died on the tracks of the Death Railway, worked to death, as a prisoner of
war.
“Come on now, Roger,” Father said, gesturing to my sword, “run and play.”
I was silent as I walked out into the garden, the fat leaves of grass soft beneath
my feet. It was only when I reached my cave and crawled beneath the bougainvillea
that I curled up into a ball and sobbed.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, in the cave, in the garden of our house on
Pulau Brani. I only know that when I crawled out from beneath the leaves, it was not
the Malay street seller that I thought about, or our amah, or the Hainanese house
boy, or my English parents. I thought of the gardener, the soldier beneath the palms,
softly raking the leaves.
In the study, the cane nestled between the rolls of maps. I took it in my hands
and felt the bite of bamboo, between my fingers...
© Stephanie Scott 2014.