A Different Sky, page 48
Death’s happy release. Death’s happy release. The needle was stuck, but Krishna lay on his charpoy content to listen to the repeating wail. The sound hammered in Leila’s head and with an abusive shout at the servant, she ran up the stairs and into her husband’s room to snatch up the arm of gramophone.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she shouted.
‘I’m old and useless,’ he replied, prone upon the string bed. She was tempted to agree but held her tongue; the fuller her life became at Manikam’s, the more the sight of him annoyed her. It was not the way a wife should feel, but he had failed her as a husband, she thought angrily.
‘What about the new political party? You were full of enthusiasm not long ago,’ Leila reminded him. She was secretly relieved that the People’s Action Party, although apparently riddled with communists, appeared to offer her husband a welcome alternative to the Malayan Communist Party. She had recently discovered writings of such an inflammable nature in his desk that she had openly gasped. The article was rolled up in a copy of the notorious Freedom News and destined, she knew, for publication in the underground paper. If he were not careful, she feared he would soon be back on St John’s.
‘You said with this new People’s Action Party, Singapore had a future,’ Leila repeated.
‘Well, now I’m not so sure,’ Krishna replied aggressively. He did not feel he could give his allegiance to any party. Everyone was young and gung-ho, filled with ideals and energy, undeterred by the prospect of ploughing a minefield of impossible obstacles to achieve political goals. He thought sadly of Subhas Chandra Bose and knew, even more sadly, that he had once felt the same. Once, as an INA soldier he had held a gun easily, killed men at Imphal without thought in the cause of Indian Independence, and even seen his dream of Independence achieved. He did not know why he was depressed instead of fulfilled and elated. Now, he was afraid even to hide a cache of weapons for the Malayan Communist Party, did not like the thought of its vicious cadres in his house, and abhorred the way he was ordered about by arrogant youths half his age. BK had tried again to persuade him to shelter a cache of weapons, even threatening expulsion from the Party if he did not obey.
‘I’m too old,’ he had told BK firmly once again as they sat at the same noodle shop.
‘I’m old,’ he repeated now to Leila, who sighed in exasperation.
‘See here, the needle is broken,’ Leila said, examining the arm of the phonograph. ‘Why can’t you use the new radiogram downstairs instead of this old thing?’ Krishna did not reply.
The sound of loud knocking at the front door came to them from downstairs. A servant boy soon appeared at the top of the stairs to announce that two Chinese men were asking for the Master.
‘All the riff-raff in Chinatown expect you to be at their beck and call,’ Leila admonished as Krishna heaved himself off the charpoy and stood up. She wished she could speak more patiently.
Leaving Leila searching in a drawer for a new needle, and grateful of an excuse to be free of his wife, Krishna went downstairs to attend to the visitors. He found two young men he did not recognise waiting by the half-open front door. At first he took them to be students; they were neatly dressed and smiled at him politely. The taller boy, whose hair was shaved above his ears in a pudding bowl cut, stepped forward and apologised for disturbing him. He said he came from the Town Committee with an urgent message.
‘What is the message?’ Krishna asked. The other boy, whose face was pitted with acne, moved to stand in front of his friend. Krishna grew suspicious and frowned disapprovingly, wondering what he should do if a cache of weapons was now to be thrust upon him. He was sure this was why they had come, and that perhaps already guns were installed in the garage and protest would be helpless.
Still fumbling to insert a new needle into the gramophone, Leila heard a sudden loud crack, like the backfiring of a car in the road. A moment later the servant boy came running up the stairs for her, and one glance at his face made Leila follow. Krishna was lying on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. The front door stood open to the view of cars and carts trundling past in the street. With a moan Leila dropped to her knees beside her husband. The servant boy ran outside, shouting for help. Food hawkers stopped to turn and gawp.
‘Fetch the police, fetch a doctor!’ Leila screamed at the motley crowd gathering curiously about her door. Within a moment a large car drew up and Raj got out, accompanied by Yoshiko Ho. Alarmed, he hurried forward but stopped in shock at the sight of the wounded Krishna. Yoshiko put a hand to her mouth in horror.
‘Fetch a doctor, fetch the police,’ Raj yelled at the onlookers, his heart racing in panic.
Leila gazed down at her husband’s face as she cradled his head in her lap. Everything seemed like a dream. Krishna opened his eyes and moved his lips, but no words took shape. Leila gave a sob, stricken by guilt at the way she had earlier spoken to him. Transfixed by horror, she held his hands as blood trickled from his mouth. Krishna looked up, fixing his eyes upon her face, and even when they stilled and the light was gone from his gaze, he continued to stare urgently up at her.
37
THE FIRST DAY OF April, the day before the election, was one of frenzied activity. Howard spent the day in the constituency, going from door to door in streets that still might be persuaded to vote Progressive. In this mixed Chinese area of prosperous shopkeepers and well-to-do residents, a Progressive win was expected. In the weeks leading up to the election Howard and his team of volunteers had been out canvassing every spare moment, but he knew he gave up too easily, did not have the needed evangelical belief in the party he worked for. The new People’s Action Party, for all their bluster, had only fielded four candidates, preferring to await political maturity and to strengthen their muscle in opposition. Both the volatile lawyer Lee Kwan Yew and his radical colleague Lim Chin Siong were standing as candidates in working-class Chinese areas where unionists, poor factory labourers and disenfranchised youths were a supportive electorate.
Howard had lost count of the number of doors he had knocked upon, shaking hands and distributing pamphlets. He had organised loudspeaker vans and driven around, his own voice echoing in his ears, promoting a candidate he barely knew and who was rarely seen in the constituency. As he himself was frequently to be seen there, people came to him with their grievances. Residents from a street called Lorong Sakai wanted permission to change its name, as the Japanese echo was distasteful to them. A poor area of one ward wanted electricity. People showed him their homes, which they complained were worse than stables, and he could not but agree. Other residents requested the removal of a hawker area or complained of a preponderance of rats. In these wards, much to Howard’s chagrin, his face became known as the face of the Progressive Party.
Momentum had built all over the island as the election loomed. Under the tall tembusu tree, David Marshall continued with his lunchtime forum but as much as the issue of Independence, he was now pressed to discuss the question of whether he would or would not wear the required formal robes if elected to the Legislative Assembly.
‘I hope to walk in dressed as I am,’ he said firmly, standing his ground in his perennial belted safari jacket and trousers. ‘Will you at least wear a necktie?’ someone shouted.
‘In this lovely climate, the necktie is not only not required, it is a constriction,’ he responded.
The polling booths opened at 8 a.m. and from an early hour there was a reasonable turnout, although much less brisk than expected. Police were on standby, ready for incidents. Chinese Middle School students had promised not to march as intended on Government House with a new protest and the weather was forecast to be no hazard to voters. Howard was busy all day urging people to vote, driving those in need to the polling station at a local school in one of the cars Raj had hired. The ballot boxes were closed at 8 p.m. and when it was done he was exhausted.
A strong smell of the river drifted on the night. Howard was late arriving at Victoria Memorial Hall from the campaign headquarters and found Boy Scouts carrying in the last ballot boxes. Already a crowd had gathered outside the hall in anticipation of the results. As far as Howard could see, most of those waiting appeared to be the usual young trade unionists. Empress Place was filling up, cordons were erected to hold people back. Police vans and riot police were in evidence; an atmosphere of expectation was tight upon them all.
Arc lights blazed on graceful colonial buildings, and Howard thought of the Englishmen who for over a century had ruled the colony, showing no chink in their armour. Now it was possible the radical lawyer Lee Kuan Yew and Lim Chin Siong, a man of communist sympathies, as well as the anti-establishment David Marshall, would enter those portals of power, intent on razing the past. Howard was pushed uncomfortably about in the crush, and over the heads before him saw Raj entering Victoria Memorial Hall, with Yoshiko beside him. Light from the great lamps set up outside reflected lustrously on Raj’s pomaded hair. With his usual authoritative manner, he was demanding that people step back to allow him to move forward. From the river came the hoot of a boat’s horn.
Inside, the counting of votes had started and the long wait for results begun. As the hours stretched out the crowd outside continued to grow, and by midnight many thousands overflowed the area around the hall, spilling back to the Cricket Club and the Padang. Never before had the country been stirred in this way and the crowd was restless, impatient for news. Inside the hall the mounting tension was almost unbearable as everyone waited; already a clear, unexpected and shocking swing to the left was emerging.
When at last the results were announced at two in the morning, the Progressive Party had taken only four seats out of twenty-five, and David Marshall’s Labour Front had a landslide majority. Flushed with victory, Labour Front supporters ran riot in the hall. The People’s Action Party candidates, Lee Kuan Yew and Lim Chin Siong had, as expected, taken their constituencies with unprecedented numbers of votes. As this news was announced to the waiting crowd, cheering students and trade unionists broke through police barriers to lift the successful candidates on to their shoulders, jubilantly carrying them forward, their shouts and cheers echoing into the night. Merdeka! Merdeka! Howard heard the cry all around him. The great arc lights picked out Lee Kuan Yew as he was jolted and pitched about on the shoulders of his supporters. Howard feared the man might slip from his precarious perch. Instead, he kept his balance, raising his arms in triumph.
Until the end, Raj had been sure the Progressive Party would win. His face wet with excitement, dark patches of sweat staining his shirt under his armpits, he had walked about confidently during the counting. The Labour Front victory was a shock for which he was unprepared. Crushed and perplexed, he grew petulant then furious, especially at the success of the two People’s Action Party candidates.
‘How will they allow such radicals into the Legislative Chamber? That Lim doesn’t even speak much English, only Chinese. What’s the matter with people?’ Raj asked Howard accusingly, his fleshy face creased with disappointment, still baffled by the distressing vote.
‘I invested so much money in this. I have never before made a bad deal,’ Raj raged as they stood watching the triumphant, cheering crowd as it was announced that David Marshall would become Chief Minister of Singapore. It was a warm, close night and a bloated moon, spongy as a piece of bean curd, hung low in the sky. Above them the clock tower of Victoria Memorial Hall rose darkly into the night.
‘The electorate has changed,’ Howard said quietly, observing the scene before him, feeling guilty at failing Raj yet secretly jubilant that the Labour Front had won. ‘Anyone who wants to stand in politics here today can’t afford to ignore the Chinese masses, or the people’s desire for self-government.’
‘The Governor will not like working with such raggle-taggle people’. Raj was unable to contain his anger; his lips bunched together threateningly.
Soon David Marshall, the ebullient new Chief Minister, responding to the ecstatic crowd, appeared on an upper balcony, waving excitedly to the throng. A man of great gestures and blazing eyes, used to promoting courtroom drama, his voice boomed out through the public address system, filled with crusading zeal. Raising his arms in victory before the crowd, he threw his head back and roared into the night.
‘It is the people’s victory. Today victory is yours.’
Howard walked over from Belvedere to Bougainvillaea House each evening to be with Mei Lan after he returned from work; it was now a regular routine. Often, he ate dinner with her squashed around the large table with more than a dozen women and several children. He was not sure what the status of his relationship with Mei Lan was, and feared to ask, but he seemed to have a definite if undefined role to play. A habit had built up and he knew this was all she wanted and he must be content. Although he kept a formal distance, she did allow the occasional brief touch to pass between them but he felt this was in kindness to him. Now, sitting beside her on a bench outside the back door of Bougainvillaea House, facing the canal that had once been such a source of contention, he resolved to tell her about the sale of Belvedere. Light from the house lit the patch of grass and the bougainvillaea bushes about them. A smell of brackish water came to them from the dark trench of the canal, and the ragged fringe of trees behind which the old gazebo of Lim Villa still lay, could just be seen.
‘Agents have already been to see it and some potential buyers as well but Belvedere is not easy to sell. No one wants such a run-down place. The agents say we must look for someone who wants the land to build upon after pulling down the old house.’ Even as he spoke, he saw shock gather in her face as she tried to digest the news.
Now that the election was over Howard had returned to a calm routine at the Social Welfare Department; he was even asked to lecture on economics to students at the University of Malaya. At Social Welfare he was well liked, yet restlessness filled him. His brush with the excitement of politics had unsettled him, had left him wanting to be part of the exhilarating rush for freedom. When unexpectedly, after only a month in office, David Marshall offered him this chance Howard did not hesitate to take it. He was invited to lunch at a small restaurant and had hardly sat down when the Chief Minister fixed his large sad eyes upon him.
‘I need a young man like you in the Chief Minister’s office,’ he said, taking out a box of tobacco and pressing some into the bowl of his pipe.
‘You hardly know me.’ Howard could not hide his shock.
‘I have done my homework and besides, I know the worth of a man immediately I look at him.’ Marshall lit up his pipe, releasing the heady perfume of tobacco. He had not forgotten Howard, and had noted his quiet confidence and insight as exceptional; just the qualities he needed to have in the men around him now.
‘I intend to ask for immediate independence for the country. No more stalling or delays from all those old government farts – we’ll push the thing through. Until now I’ve had undefined functions as Chief Minister, but not any more. After the election it was assumed by the Governor that I would regard the title of Chief Minister as an honorific one. They did not even have an office for Chief Minister at Government House, and didn’t intend to give me one either. When I threatened to set up office under “the old apple tree” where I had held my lunchtime public talks, they cleared a space under the stairs, quite literally. A small room, no more than a broom cupboard with a table and a telephone; the Governor tried to humiliate me. So, when I entered the August Presence I wore a bush shirt; I thought that would be insult enough.’ Marshall was gleeful, puffing fiercely at his pipe. Then his face became serious as he leaned back in his chair, staring at Howard over the table.
‘At some point there will be another election. Times are changing, and a few months ago who would have thought we’d get this far? The future will be nothing like our past. The country will need young men like you. Working with me will give you political insight and experience. You should think of standing as a Labour Front candidate in a future election. Until then, if you stay by my side, I’ll teach you the tricks of the trade.’ Marshall flashed an impish grin.
Over the following days and weeks Howard thought about what Marshall had said. He remembered the men he had met at the Malayan Democratic Union, men who could make a difference, and knew a seed was planted in him then that had only now begun to germinate. He was grateful to Marshall for pointing the way ahead. The next day he gave in his notice at the Social Welfare Department, and Marshall whisked him away within the week.
From then on Howard was at Marshall’s beck and call, in and out of the small office in Government House, and the larger premises in town. When he entered the colonial depths of Government House he felt both awed by his own audaciousness and anger at the inflexible pomposity of the place, impatient for the changes Marshall promised would come. He grew used to the sight of the colonial immortals: the Governor, the Chief Secretary and all the others at Government House that Marshall required him to meet. Marshall was tireless and full of verve but, from the day he was elected Chief Minister, trouble loomed and dangerous strikes appeared imminent.
