It Was Not Yet Quite Dark
Darkness would soon fall. It was still raining slightly; big drops would run off the verandah thatch and plop on to the banana leaves or make circles for themselves in the red-brown mud. In the mid-distance the oleander stands could still be made out, their leaves and blossoms answering to the same rhythm and weight of big, scattered raindrops. The strong ground-odour of vibrant plant life was everywhere in this season which brought the rains. A hundred yards off, the tall density of forest was a misty grey margin on the edge of vision.
Miriam had just brought me a bowl of rice. With a smile and a nod from where I sat cross-legged on the floor matting I took it in both hands. She went back into the corner space provided for our kitchen to fetch her own, and mow carried another containing our vegetable dish. With a rustle of her sarong she sat down beside me, and in silence we both contemplated the rain and the growing dark. Between us, Blaki Khan lay sprawled, making small noises as old dogs will in their sleep. I reached a hand down to rumple and stroke his sleek black coat. He quivered a forepaw at the feel of it. Miriam put her hand on mine, and as a response to even such insignificant extra weight Blaki Khan stirred the paw again. I loved that dog. He was of a lean mountain breed, a gift from a friend a good few years ago. Middle-sized, short-haired, black as jet. Getting on now, though, and not so lean nor half so sprightly any more. ‘I’ll fetch the lamp’, Miriam said. With another silky rustle she stood and moved noiselessly away.
I watched her go. I thought how beautiful she was, and how lucky I’d been; how blessed and bountiful our years together had been. She had come down from the north, from Thailand, with her Chinese-Malay father after her mother had died. Hundreds had fled the towns for the interior, then, from fear of the expected Japanese invasion; rumours of the atrocities across the way in Indo-China had come in a constant stream. So they had shouldered their bundles, the big one and the little one, and trudged south.He had brought her back, he said, to ‘the old family farm’ – in reality just a few acres of bottomland his father before him had cleared and farmed after a fashion in the years before the old man had taken himself north to where the good markets were. It was all still as he had left it. No-one had touched it, except Nature, who had gone far in reclaiming her own, and, Uncle Chao (who knew everything) had said, ‘a limping young fellow off his head’ who had lived in the ruinous hut for a short time before moving on. And the little girl not quite eight years old and her father had worked hard and built a new hut and cleared the land, and had in hardship sewn and grown there during the years that the Japanese had advanced south again and swarmed past them. Miraculously, they had remained in that remote stretch of jungle unmolested. When the war was over and the British were there again her father was able to venture afield once more to get hired help from the settlements further off. With the resistance soon shifted from conflict with the Japs to combatting the returned Brits, though, times were far from settled. In that deep jungle sanctuary, fortunately, they were mostly undisturbed and for five or so hard-working, eventually profitable years had farmed jute and trekked to trade it in the town. Then came that day, when she had been fishing for supper from the stream, when the hut with her father inside, asleep or helpless from some accident and his pipe dropped to the floor, had burned to the ground. At fifteen, alone, grieved, with nothing but a few copper coins she had salvaged from the wreckage, seeking no-one’s help, she had taken the long begging road to the city. She had been lucky, securing after only a short while a job as a cleaner at the Military Hospital. And that was where, two years later, God introduced us.
I was there as the consequence of a heated quarrel with the C.O. and a scuffle with a fellow officer for my sidearm which resulted in a gunshot wound to the head, All I knew was that I couldn’t do the job I was being told to do. The new orders which called for uprooting peasant families from their homes and removing them into stockades was not what I was there for. What fate the Army had in store for me I didn’t know.Little Moby Benyon remained just about the only friend who visited me regularly during my recuperation. It was during those days when she took me for walks in my wheelchair along the eucalyptus avenue that Evans, my former orderly and a good lad, brought me the black dog, saying chirpily ‘Compliments of Lieutenant Benyon, Sir’. (Moby, I knew, had just recently received confirmation of his posting to Singapore). News of my romance with a servant spread quickly in that enclave society, of course, especially among the wives, and I realized there were tongues wagging of my ‘going native’. We continued our walks along the eucalyptus avenue – three of us, now. Largely recovered, after a small church ceremony in which Moby Benyon, as best man and young Evans were among the few genuine as opposed to merely interested observers in the congregation, I was relieved to find that things had been quietly smoothed out, that the Army didn’t want to be embarrassed by this particular type of breakdown in discipline, that the Army had no further use for me (nor I for the Army), and that I was to be allowed to resign my commission ‘honourably’. Still, my position was considerably uncertain; I felt that as far as my continued presence was concerned a lot was being kept from me and I wasn’t sure what outcome was in store for me; the intention was probably to pack me off home. So we resolved, my bride and I, that we and the black dog would slip away as quietly as we could, and with what savings I would withdraw start our new life together, a secret life, at ‘the old family farm’.At first it wasn’t easy, but with enough hired help we cleared the land and built a new bungalow. There was nothing she didn’t know about the jute trade. My limited financial input was useful at the start, but it was with her practical experience of farming from a tender age and subsequent understanding of the market – for she would always accompany her father and the carters – that we succeeded. After those first years, we had been able to make a decent living out of it There was now a comfortable home, the ponds, and a wide stretch o verdant jute forest. And I rejoiced that after the vicissitudes which had visited us in the long years we were apart, our lives had crossed and come together.
It was not yet quite dark; In the kitchen she was singing softly as she saw to the lamp, some lullaby-like song in Thai. I watched the steam curling idly from the rice and veg. The palms were there no more. I stared into that darkness, thinking. There had been rumors of late of strangers, possibly bandits, who had wandered about the skirts of the outlying plantations. We had talked about it, and although she said not much, I knew it had unnerved her; I also knew that she would never leave this place. We had no near neighbours. So for the past few days I had kept the Webley cleaned, oiled, and loaded, close at hand. I wouldn’t touch the meal, I know I thought – funny how we think of these ordinary little things – until Miriam came back with some light. Its wholesome smell came drifting upward.
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Blaki Khan lay on the floor next to me. His throat was slit right down to his chest, and he had been hacked about the body. His throat was open and bright gleaming pink, and red ran everywhere. His mouth was open wide, his white teeth set apart as though ready to bark. His tongue was sliced and hanging loose. His incisors struck me as being more prominent than ever – they looked hugely sharp. Like a wolf, I thought. My God, he was a fiendish picture, all opened up and pink and bloody inside, and his eyes bulging wide in a fixed, and what looked like a surprised, living stare. Then I was aware, close to my head and only a few inches away, of the long, downward-hanging blade of a parang, and it was covered in and dripping red. It was in the hands of a tall man. His bare upper body gleamed in the light – was it our lamp? – he wore a bandana about his head, and I fancied he had a kind of spindly, drooping moustache. In his other hand he held the Webley. I couldn’t see properly, but there were one or two others with him, I’m sure, because they were talking furtively in the Malay dialect I knew. ‘We’d better move them to some other place’, one of them said. I don’t know who he included in ‘them’; I couldn’t think clearly. What was he talking about? I just couldn’t think straight. Miriam! I panicked. Miriam! Where are you?’
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I stood at the tree-line, looking back at the home we’d built together. To left and right on the periphery of my sight stood our tall acres of jute trees. A hundred yards off to the front, Blaki Khan was nosing at a pace along the verandah, scenting for all he was worth, his tail wagging furiously behind him. He stopped, sniffed, then went on; stopped again, snout pressed into the boards. It wasn’t raining any more. In fact it was a glorious day, with the sky a wedgewood-blue and the sun beating down upon the bungalow’s tawny thatch. Now someone had given him a ball! He was jumping up and down, now pumping the ball away from him with that black snout, now trying to gather it in to him with his paws so that he could get his teeth around it. Now he’d released it, or it was gone, and he was racing back and forth from one end of the verandah to the other, pulling up short in a scramble of paws and tail as he reached the end, then pounding madly in the opposite direction. He didn’t stop. I called him to come, but he took no notice, the scamp! I gave up and laughed aloud at the sky. Miriam! Miriam! Come and look at this!
I don’t know how much later it was, but it was darkening fast, and rain falling still. From where I was settled on the floor, I watched the big drops drip-dropping from the roof and plopping on to the leaves of the banana tree, and making their individual circles in the mud outside the verandah. Though, I could hardly see it. The dark was taking over so quickly, blotting out everything, now … And my head too was a dark, weary weight that could make nothing out. Oh, it was dark …But I did see Miriam coming to me in those small, gliding steps within the sheath of her dress and with all the graceful movement so characteristic of women of her race. I think she was carrying a bowl of rice. And there was that wonderful, loving glow of hers about her face.
(From ‘Memories, Moods, Reflections’ )
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Glossary and Notes:
Khan: In Turkic and Mongolic languages, a title having the meaning of ‘king’ / ‘ruler’ / ‘chief’.
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Webley: The standard service revolver for British, Empire and Commonwealth officers from 1887 to 1963. At .455 calibre, it packed a powerful punch. With a Webley 45 in your hand, you could safely stare down the gun-barrel of your opponent and drawl ‘Go ahead. Make my day’.
Sarong: Wrap-around garment of light fabric tied at the side, traditional attire in many South-east Asian and South Asian countries.
Parang: The long, slim-bladed cutting knife (machete) used widely across the Malay Archipelago.
Remarks on the story’s origin:
I have often wished to catch a dream. On a few occasions over the years, I thought I had – that is, recalled a dream so vividly on waking that I thought I’d be able to remember its outstanding details fully enough to make a story out of it: but the details always foundered confusedly, disintegrating to a point where they refused to be collected in a complete thread. Well, that’s how most dreams are; they may be in parts elaborately detailed, while in others racing haphazardly between time and space. In these instances I had to give up. But just a very short while ago, in the early hours of this Saturday, November 9, 2024 to be precise, I experienced a dream that startled me into realizing that sufficient of it remained, in detail and in overall theme, to enable me to transfer it into a related whole. I say ‘startled’; I was startled by its reality – for it was for the most part a terrifying dream – and by the fact that so much of it remained so consecutively. The worst part was the butchering of my old dog, ‘Blackie’, and seeing him laid open before me. The colours, the bright glistening pink of his throat and chest contrasted with the jet-black of his coat, the white of his open teeth and the bulging whites of his frightened eyes appalled me, and for hours after I’d awoken. Then there was the consciousness of dark, threatening figures looming around and being at their mercy, being moved from one place to another whilst having to both experience being the victim and having to look upon it as a helpless, detached observer. When it comes to the feelings of horror and helplessness engendered very little has been changed, but for the sake of making a story out of it I’ve been obliged to change one or two things – minimizing the cast and bestowing positive identities was a priority – which has preserved the essential elements of the dream, but resulted in a concise, much simplified drama.
The setting of the dream events was not at all to be discerned, apart from one small part, which I will come to. Nor were the others at my side in the drama to be clearly seen, all people close to me – my family, I strongly felt; all were with me only as shadows at the time. I decided to give the tale the Asian setting that has been the experience of half my life, now; and as far as I can tell it was my present surroundings here in the Far East which played out in the dream. Also, not long after I awoke, to my mind came a story, a novella I’d read years ago, Nights in Serampore: Mircea Eliade is best known for his scholarly work, but was also able to project this into several works of fiction. The Asian setting of this story of his is evident from its title, and a supernatural theme was plainly required to relate my dream. Anyway, as it turned out I decided to situate the story in South-east Asia – specifically, in peninsular Malaya. The story begins in 1952, during the period of the Brit ‘emergency’ there – the year that the new incoming British High Commissioner, General Gerald Templer, had inaugurated a policy of forcibly moving the large, scattered Chinese population across the country, many of whom had fled there from the the advancing Japanese forces – into fenced, gated and guarded ‘new villages’ which were effectively concentration camps. All were conveniently classed by the ruling power as ‘squatters’, and while it is true that as wartime refugees they had no title to the lands they occupied, it was also forgotten that many had been resident in Malaya for generations, having arrived there from southern China during Ming times – from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Templer’s time in Malaya is characterized by a host of unsavouy and bloody-minded measures, including poisoning crops, defoliation of forest (paving the way for the U.S. use of Agent Orange in Vietnam),and, horrifically, the official employment of Dayak headhunters.
I hope that for the reader the way my story proceeds, allowing for its brevity, too, is neither too obscure nor too obvious; I’ve tried to tell it in such a way that hints are given to its intended outcome; I hope this has succeeded. This type of forward and backward telling, the reader will know, is by no means new, the first I encountered, and the classic example, being Ambrose Bierce’s beautifully conceived An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. A literary device which was the foundation of what we are used to seeing as ‘flashbacks’ and in ‘forward flashes’ on our screens.
The one small part in my dream which I can positively identify and place is where the resurrected- to-his-master’s needs Blaki Khan charges playfully up and down the verandah; the location being in reality the palm-shaded longer side of the quadrangle of our old school in the grounds of St.John’s Church, Hsin-chu, Taiwan, where the real Blackie, my inseparable friend for seventeen years, knew happy times. This appeared playing over several times toward the end of the dream. There he went, appearing and disappearing, running and sniffing happily. Those good but shapeless people who were with me, those who knew Blackie, saw it too, but each time we were uncertain if it really was my dog (thinking of it, this appears to be a recognizable motif in tales of resurrection). Then the one I could not see but who was with me most brought relief and happiness to us all by exclaiming definitively ‘Yes, that’s him!’ But how, really, to shape an unbidden, intrusive consciousness, not at all your own, which dictates a passage of thoughts and visions seeming to last for hours but which might in actuality last only moments, and which refuses to show anything more than an interrupted, kaleidoscopic mish-mash, into an understandable, as far as possible sequential account? It has to be a story, as well as a dream, and I found that the limitations already mentioned would have to be imposed if it was to be offered as such.
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I’ve had scant truck with Malaya/Malaysia. I passed through Kuala Lumpur once and spent about a week in Penang, on the west coast, where there’s a wonderful beach. That’s where the 2nd battalion of my Welsh Fusilier regiment was stationed in the mid/late 1950s. After their return (and following their disbandment around ’57) I was able to discuss the Malayan posting with a good many of them at the Regimental Depot in Wrexham, northern Wales. I suppose that might be another hovering reason for giving the story its Malayan setting.
As a closing excursus, a little more about the Webley 45. As a young fellow, I once had a job in the storage facility of an electronics factory in England, in a town where a large number of people were emigrés from north-east London. My none-too-exhilarating occupation was to search out steel shelves, under artificial lighting, for resistors and transistors of a certain description, slip them into little brown envelopes, and forward them to some unknown destination on the factory floor. Now employed there at the time was an ancient-of-days, an old chap, a real old Cockney who must then – this was about ’64 – have been in his late seventies . Clad in a long dun-coloured dust coat, his job was to sweep the factory floor, which would bring him into our enclosed storage area, and now and then he would take a break from his sweeping, lean on his broom, and chat with me. I can’t now remember his name – let’s say it was ‘Old Charlie’ – but he had many an interesting tale to tell. He’d served with the Brits in China at the time of the Boxer Uprising. He told me of one time when he had witnessed a public execution. I’ve always remembered one little adventure he told me of, when he and his mates were pursuing a body of suspected ‘insurrectionists’ along the banks of the Yangtse. It was poetic, and I’ll do ‘Old Charlie’ a favour here, and, using his very words, show it as a verse couplet:
Cor! Ten men an’ a Webley
chased ‘em up the Yangtse!
I’ve often tried to imagine it, Charlie.
© 2024 Dafydd Hughes Lewis. All rights reserved. 