36
FEBRUARY 1915
TANGLIN BARRACKS NESTLED in the tropical fauna of Mount Harriet. Trails of yellow dirt ran between clusters of thistles and led up to white oblong blocks huddling in the shade of overhanging roofs. Between them coconut palms rustled in a warm, dry breeze. Hedges of bougainvillea garlanded tiny lawns furnished with wicker chairs and tables. Everything exuded a lovely, bucolic charm.
The westering sun shone at an angle. It was almost five in the afternoon. At this hour officers usually occupied the lawns, reclining on long chairs after tiffin. This afternoon however, the lawns were empty.
The pyramidal roof of the Drill Hall loomed near; a row of columns, thin as matchsticks, lined its perimeter. Anton was driving his mule towards it and towing a cart laden with cigarettes: Army Clubs, Kenilworths, Black Cats, Smith’s Glasgow Mixtures. Anything the Tommies loved. Anton knew the regular supplies to the barracks had been disrupted by the Lunar New Year festivities and the Tommies needed their fags as if the Great War depended on it. He threw his voice above the shrill of insects, lyrically declaiming the brands of cigarettes in hope of invoking some business.
But the compound did not respond.
He went a little farther, peddling the brands in an oratorical chant and passing one silent block after another. He was approaching the detention barracks that supposedly held German internees—mostly sailors from a German cruiser which had been put out of action earlier by an Australian warship. And there at last, he found a soldier perched on the edge of a platform at a guard post.
He leapt from the cart, took two cases of Kenilworth cigarettes and went over, only to present them to a face mutilated by a ghastly bullet wound. The bullet had obliquely entered the right temple and come out through the spot where his nose would’ve been. Dollops of brain matter fell from it and onto the dead soldier’s crotch.
Anton didn’t scream. He just stood gawking at the grisly sight. When he mustered sufficient courage to advance another hundred yards towards the cricket ground he found two more dead soldiers at another guard post. On the portico steps of a nearby stilted bungalow he discovered the mangled body of a man, presumably a drill instructor by his uniform, his back and nape riddled with the raw, almond-shaped wounds of bayonets.
In a staff office of the detention barracks, papers fluttered under a whirring electric desk fan and coffee had gone stale in their tin mugs. An officer laid face-down on his bullet-splintered desk with his head shot open. By the cricket ground itself, Anton surveyed a field stippled with corpses still in their white exercise attire.
Terror finally stole its way into him. He struck the mule hard on its hind and sent it kicking and braying down the dusty track. He whipped the wretched creature mercilessly until it brought him to a wider avenue of jambu trees and angsanas. The discovery of a small crowd ahead brought relief and restored equanimity, and Anton slowed the mule.
There was a gharry with its wheels wedged in a roadside ditch, its side stippled with bullet holes. Pulling abreast of it, Anton saw that in it were the corpses of a European man and a lady festering in the afternoon heat. The lady’s skin was a ghastly grey; her white muslin blouse matted in dark old blood. There were five more corpses laid out in a row just beside the gharry. Anton saw that one of them had a large, bald head that shone like a pearl in the daylight.
The small crowd of townsfolk converged upon the scene and two Malay constables moved in to deter looting. They stood between the gharry and the crowd and rested their fists on their hips, as if undecided on what to do with the corpses.
Anton drove up to them. “Apa berlaku sini?”
One of them, a handsome smooth-faced young man with a light moustache, replied rather proficiently in English. “Sepoys. They went amok and start shooting all the ang mohs they see, young or old also shoot. Sangat terok lah. I heard they even shoot their CO.”
Emboldened by the presence of the crowd, Anton ventured a closer inspection of the corpses and became particularly interested in the hairless one. It was wearing a dark jacket resembling that of a clergyman, with hemming that reached beyond the knees. Everything about it was large; hands, feet, face and all. Its skin exuded a waxy, almost translucent appearance. Beneath bony, protuberant brows a pair of dead eyes sat half-opened in their sockets; the pupil in one of them was yellow and the other a bright emerald-green. On the grass not far from him lay a felt Homburg hat.
Anton seemed to have discovered something in the dead face, and the longer he stared at it the more frightened of it he became. He thought he had seen the dead face alive. In shreds of disjointed memories he saw that it had once breathed and spoken, and they filled him with a desperate need to absolve himself of an unfathomable guilt.
A black Austin drove up to them in a stream of yellow dust and the crowd now turned their attention upon the marvel of an automobile. A dapper Chinese man stepped out of the back, sporting a white cotton jacket, white flannel trousers and a white Panama hat. His attire contrasted sharply with his round-rimmed eyeglasses of flat, smoky quartz. A light moustache grew over his fair, scholarly face.
He crouched by the hairless corpse and laid his hand over its bloodied chest. Then he removed his hat and held that position for a few seconds as if in mourning. When he finished he slid a hand under the corpse’s coat and retrieved a chromium object the size of a pocketwatch. No one seemed to have noticed the crafty move but Anton caught it all and out went his finger, firm and accusing.
“Thief!” he cried.
The accusation alarmed the man at first, but he kept his hands in his trouser pockets and regarded his accuser amusedly with a slight tilt of head. When the constables hustled over to him he raised nothing in defence. Anton seized the sleeve of one of the constables and said vehemently: “I saw this man take the dead man’s pocketwatch! It must be inside one of his pockets now. Search him and you’ll see!”
“He’s a detective,” said the constable. “We know him.”
“Detective or not I saw him slip something into his pocket when you weren’t looking!” Anton insisted. “He can sell such things. I know his kind; stealing from the dead and pawning them for money.”
The constables wouldn’t suffer to hear any more of Anton’s petition and began dispersing the crowd. They might have been offered a cut in the shady enterprise and Anton, although much chagrined, knew he was powerless against such collusion. Before entering his black Austin, the thief picked out Anton over the eyeglasses that hung low over his nose. Their eyes met, and he smiled and touched the rim of his Panama hat in parting.
37
ANTON
15th September 1867, Sunday
I shall turn 30 in two years, and with Origen’s counsel I have made preparations by means of a birth registration duplicate, which I had very fortuitously procured two days earlier from a sagacious ally who interns at the Office of Health and Statistics. I named this duplicate Anton, after my doctor, Anton MacCain.
Dr MacCain said the name Anton came from the Romanic name Antonius, a variant of Anthony. I have immense respect for people who comprehend the context of their names; they often seek a meaning to life, pursue a definitive purpose in the tasks they perform. Undoubtedly Dr MacCain was very good at what he did. Our acquaintanceship, however, did not last, and he has since returned to Scotland to serve in the Board of a hospital there.