State of Siege

“If you attempt to escape you will be shot.”

“I wasn’t attempting…” I did not trouble to finish the sentence. I could see by his eyes now that he had not understood what I had said. If I translated it into Malay, he would know that I knew, and therefore lose face. It was better to keep quiet.

He still glowered at us though, waiting for the next move.

“The soldier did not understand,” I said carefully.

He hesitated. He had got that all right and was now fumbling among his English sentences for a suitable reply. I felt Rosalie stir and gripped her arm to stop her from speaking. At last, he shrugged.

“It is ordered you stay here,” he repeated, and went out on to the terrace.

“What really happened?” Rosalie asked.

I told her. She made no comment, but I could see that she thought I had been stupid. I knew it myself, now. Because I had been able to bathe and shave, because the sentry had not prevented my going to the balustrade to look down into the square, because I had been able to change into clean clothes and feel for a few minutes like a rational European, I had made the mistake of behaving like one. As a result, I had a bad pain in the stomach; worse, I had reminded the men in the other room of our existence, which was what Suparto had expressly warned me not to do.

“We can’t go without water,” I said defensively.

“We have water. There is still some in the bottle.”

“That won’t last long.”

“I am not thirsty now.”

“But you will be later. And hungry, too.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, there you are.”

“We shall not die of thirst or hunger,” she said.

I had no answer for that. She was not being ironical. She was merely expressing a Sundanese point of view. In lush Sunda nobody dies of thirst or hunger; only of disease or violence. There is no winter for which to prepare, no drought to fear. The harvests are not seasonal as we understand the term. Tread a seed into the warm, rich earth and shortly you will have a tree heavy with fruit. Survival is achieved not by taking thought for the future, but by manipulating as best one can the immediate present. By thinking like a European, by anticipating bodily needs instead of waiting passively for them to present themselves, I had modified unfavourably the present situation of the bodies in question.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the smear of black grease that the gun had left on my shirt. Rosalie had moved away. Now she returned and sat down beside me. She had a box of Kleenex and a can of lighter fluid that Jebb had left on the dressing table. She began to wipe off the grease.

“It seemed a reasonable thing to do,” I said.

“These are not reasonable people.”

“I know that now.”

“Why do you think that I told you about the pemoedas who killed my father? I know these people. Mostly they are quiet and gentle. In the kampongs you will see a boy of twelve run to his mother and suck her breast when he is frightened or hurt. They smile a lot and laugh and seem happy, though they are also sad and afraid. But some are like those madmen nobody knows about, who have devils inside them waiting. And when there are guns to fire and people to kill, the devils come out. I have seen it.”

“Do you think that Major Suparto has a devil?”

“Perhaps. But he does not wish to kill you. I do not know why. But his advice was good. If they do not see you or hear you, they do not think of you, and you are safe.”

I said nothing. In the silence, the sound of the radio xylophone in the next room became distinct again. The five notes were in the form of a scale. Doh-ray-me-soh-lah. What was the name of it? The pentatonic? Ah yes. If only they would play it descending for a change; or play the Japanese National Anthem; that used the same scale. After all, it was the Japanese who had originated the signal.

It ceased abruptly. I waited for the announcement to begin again. There was a long silence. The men in the next room were no longer talking. The sentry was staring at the living-room door. Then, there was the hiss of a disc recording surface and a rendering of the Sunda battle song. This was different from the Republican National Anthem, which was a westernised song, composed, it was said, by the Dutch saxophone-player who led the Orient Hotel orchestra. The battle song was chanted by male voices to the accompaniment of drums, many small cymbals and one cumbersome string instrument that was twanged like a zither. Gedge, who was interested in such matters, said that the battle song was not really native to Sunda, but had been imported from the Spice Islands. However, in Sunda it was supposed to evoke memories of the old warrior sultans and the early struggles against the colonial powers. The reason it had not been used as a national anthem was that, even to the most sympathetic western ears, it had no identifiable melody, and a national anthem that could only be played in Sunda would, it had been felt, cause the Republic’s representatives abroad to lose face.