State of Siege

“Aren’t these repairs a waste of time, Mr. Fraser?”

“I don’t think so.”

There was no trace of plaster dust on his uniform. I guessed that he had been in the corridor when the ceilings of the apartment had come down.

“The planes may be returning soon,” he said.

“They will have to score a direct hit to do any more damage here. And I understand that you are putting machine guns on the roof. If they couldn’t manage to hit the place before, they’re not likely to do better when they’re under fire.”

“I hope you’re right, Mr. Fraser. Now, I am sorry to disturb you, but you must come with me.”

The knot in my stomach tightened. “Where to?”

“I will show you.”

“Both of us?”

“Only you.”

“Shall I be coming back here?”

“I am not taking you to be executed, if that is what you mean. If you behave intelligently it is possible that you will be sent back here. Now, please.”

Rosalie had not moved. There was nothing I could do to reassure her. I pressed her arm and followed Suparto out on to the terrace. He turned into the living room.

The sentry stared blankly as I crunched past him.

The living room was in a wretched state. No attempt had been made to clear the rubble. Two pictures were lying on the floor. Some of the chairs had gone.

There were three officers there, one of them on the telephone. Suparto stopped and addressed himself to the bow-legged one.

“Nobody is to go into the next room unless this Englishman is there,” he said. “Is that understood?”

“Ya, tuan.” He eyed me curiously.

Suparto nodded to me.

I followed him out into the passage, past a sentry and down the stairs to the next floor. There were two more sentries on guard at the swing doors. As Suparto approached they stood aside for him to pass.

The ceiling had come down in the corridor beyond, and some of the doors belonging to the offices leading off it were propped against the walls. Just beyond the main stairway landing, a group of officers stood outside an office door listening to a captain reading out orders for the requisitioning of rice. They made way for Suparto and I followed him through an office, where a man sat loading machine-gun magazines, to a door marked “TECHNICAL CONTROLLER.” Suparto knocked on the door and went in.

There were three men in the room: Sanusi, Roda and a man in civilian clothes whom I recognised as the editor of a Selampang newspaper subsidised by the Nasjah Government. I had met him when he had visited Tangga with a party of other journalists; but if he now remembered me, the memory was inconvenient, for he gave me no more than a blank stare. Sanusi and Roda were reading a copy of a printed proclamation which was spread out on the desk. Suparto and I stood just inside the door, waiting. When the reading was finished, there was a muttered conference between the three men, and then the editor took the proclamation away. Sanusi looked at me.

“Mr. Fraser, Boeng.” Suparto prodded me forward.

I went up to the desk. Sanusi examined me thoughtfully as I approached, but it was Colonel Roda, sitting at the corner of the desk, who spoke.

“You are an engineer?”

“Yes.”

“At Tangga Valley?”

“I have been resident consulting engineer there for the past three years.”

“Then you are a fully qualified and experienced person, no?”

I did not hear this properly for the first time. He spoke English with a Dutch accent, but it was his determination to be peremptory that made it difficult to understand. He had broad, fleshy lips, and the words rattled about in his mouth like pebbles.

“I beg your pardon, Colonel.”

He repeated the question loudly and even less articulately, but this time I got the meaning.

“Yes, I am qualified.”

“Then you will consider yourself under the orders of the National Freedom Government. Any delay or negligence in the carrying out of such orders will be punished immediately by death. Major Suparto…”

“A moment, Colonel.” It was Sanusi who had spoken.

Colonel Roda stopped speaking instantly, his eyes alert and respectful within their nests of fat.

Sanusi considered me in silence for several seconds, then he smiled amiably. “Mr. Fraser is a European,” he said; “and Europeans expect high payment for their services to natives. We must fix a good price.”

Roda laughed shortly.

“Were you paid a good price in Tangga, Mr. Fraser?”

“Yes, General.”

“And yet you hope to leave us?”

“A man must return to his own country sometimes.”

“But what is a man’s own country, Mr. Fraser? How does he recognise it?” He still smiled. “When I was a child here in Sunda and worked with my family in the fields, I did not know my country. If we were near a road and a Dutchman came by, or any European, my father and mother had to turn and bow respectfully to him. Us children, too. It was the Dutchman’s law and, therefore, the Dutchman’s country. Are you married, Mr. Fraser?”

“No, General.”

“The woman with you. Is she a Christian?”

“I don’t know, General.”

“There are three fine Christian churches in Selampang. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew.”