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Authors: Tan Twan Eng
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remaining one, doubling its acuity. ‘This hatred in you,’ he began a moment later, ‘you can’t let it affect your life.’
‘It’s not up to me, Magnus.’
The waiter returned with two frosted mugs of Tiger Beer. Magnus emptied half of his in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He continued to stare at me. ‘My father was a sheep farmer. My mother died when I was a four. I was brought up by my sister, Petronella. My older brother, Pieter, was teaching at the Cape. When the war broke out – that’s the Boer War I’m talking about, the second one – I joined up. I had just turned twenty. I was captured by the English less than a year later and shipped out to a POW camp in Ceylon.’
He had brought his mug to his lips again but then, without drinking from it, put it down heavily on the table. ‘I was away fighting the English when Kitchener’s men showed up at our farm one morning,’ he said. ‘Pa was at home. He put up a fight. They shot him, then burned down our farmhouse.’
‘What happened to your sister?’
‘She was sent to a concentration camp in Bloemfontein. Pieter tried to get her out. He had an English wife, but even he wasn’t allowed to visit the camp. Petronella died of typhoid. Or perhaps not – survivors later said the English had mixed powdered glass into the prisoners’ food.’
He gazed across the padang ; the grass was dry, the heat warping the air. ‘Coming home after the war to find out all this about my family... well, I couldn’t live in that part of the country again – not where I had grown up. I went to Cape Town. But still it wasn’t far enough for me.
One day – in the spring of 1905, I’d guess – I bought a ticket for Batavia. The ship was forced to dock in Malacca for repairs and we were told it would take a week to complete. I was walking in the town when I saw an abandoned church on a hill –’
‘St Paul’s.’
He gave a grunt. ‘ Ja, ja . St Paul’s. In the church grounds, I came across gravestones three, four hundred years old. And what do I find there, but the grave of Jan Van Riebeeck.’
Seeing the blank expression my face, he shook his head. ‘The world is not made up of only English history, you know. Van Riebeeck founded the Cape. He became its governor.’
‘How did he end up in Malacca?’
‘The VOC – the Dutch East Indies Company – sent him there, as punishment for something he had done.’ Memory softened his face, seeming to age him at the same time.
‘Anyway, seeing his name there, carved into that block of stone, I felt I had found a place for myself here in Malaya. I never returned to my ship, never went on to Batavia. Instead I made my way to Kuala Lumpur.’ He laughed. ‘I ended up in a British territory after all. And I’ve lived here for – what...’ his lips moved soundlessly as he counted, ‘forty-six years. Forty-six!’ He sat up in his chair and looked around for the waiter. ‘That calls for champagne!’
‘You’ve forgiven the British?’
He subsided into his seat. For a while he was silent, his gaze turned inward. ‘They couldn’t kill me when we were at war. And they couldn’t kill me when I was in the camp,’ he said finally, his voice subdued. ‘But holding on to my hatred for forty-six years... that would have killed me.’ His eye became kindly as he looked at me. ‘You Chinese are supposed to respect the elderly, Yun Ling, that’s what that fellow Confucius said, isn’t it? That’s what my wife tells me anyway.’ He managed a sip of his beer at last. ‘So listen to me. Listen to an old man… Don’t despise all Japanese for what some of them did. Let it go, this hatred in you. Let it go.’
‘They did this to me.’ Slowly I raised my maimed hand, protected in its leather glove.
He pointed to his eye patch. ‘You think this fell out by itself?’
Three weeks after that meeting with Magnus at the club, I was sacked. His idea of building a garden for Yun
‘It’s not up to me, Magnus.’
The waiter returned with two frosted mugs of Tiger Beer. Magnus emptied half of his in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He continued to stare at me. ‘My father was a sheep farmer. My mother died when I was a four. I was brought up by my sister, Petronella. My older brother, Pieter, was teaching at the Cape. When the war broke out – that’s the Boer War I’m talking about, the second one – I joined up. I had just turned twenty. I was captured by the English less than a year later and shipped out to a POW camp in Ceylon.’
He had brought his mug to his lips again but then, without drinking from it, put it down heavily on the table. ‘I was away fighting the English when Kitchener’s men showed up at our farm one morning,’ he said. ‘Pa was at home. He put up a fight. They shot him, then burned down our farmhouse.’
‘What happened to your sister?’
‘She was sent to a concentration camp in Bloemfontein. Pieter tried to get her out. He had an English wife, but even he wasn’t allowed to visit the camp. Petronella died of typhoid. Or perhaps not – survivors later said the English had mixed powdered glass into the prisoners’ food.’
He gazed across the padang ; the grass was dry, the heat warping the air. ‘Coming home after the war to find out all this about my family... well, I couldn’t live in that part of the country again – not where I had grown up. I went to Cape Town. But still it wasn’t far enough for me.
One day – in the spring of 1905, I’d guess – I bought a ticket for Batavia. The ship was forced to dock in Malacca for repairs and we were told it would take a week to complete. I was walking in the town when I saw an abandoned church on a hill –’
‘St Paul’s.’
He gave a grunt. ‘ Ja, ja . St Paul’s. In the church grounds, I came across gravestones three, four hundred years old. And what do I find there, but the grave of Jan Van Riebeeck.’
Seeing the blank expression my face, he shook his head. ‘The world is not made up of only English history, you know. Van Riebeeck founded the Cape. He became its governor.’
‘How did he end up in Malacca?’
‘The VOC – the Dutch East Indies Company – sent him there, as punishment for something he had done.’ Memory softened his face, seeming to age him at the same time.
‘Anyway, seeing his name there, carved into that block of stone, I felt I had found a place for myself here in Malaya. I never returned to my ship, never went on to Batavia. Instead I made my way to Kuala Lumpur.’ He laughed. ‘I ended up in a British territory after all. And I’ve lived here for – what...’ his lips moved soundlessly as he counted, ‘forty-six years. Forty-six!’ He sat up in his chair and looked around for the waiter. ‘That calls for champagne!’
‘You’ve forgiven the British?’
He subsided into his seat. For a while he was silent, his gaze turned inward. ‘They couldn’t kill me when we were at war. And they couldn’t kill me when I was in the camp,’ he said finally, his voice subdued. ‘But holding on to my hatred for forty-six years... that would have killed me.’ His eye became kindly as he looked at me. ‘You Chinese are supposed to respect the elderly, Yun Ling, that’s what that fellow Confucius said, isn’t it? That’s what my wife tells me anyway.’ He managed a sip of his beer at last. ‘So listen to me. Listen to an old man… Don’t despise all Japanese for what some of them did. Let it go, this hatred in you. Let it go.’
‘They did this to me.’ Slowly I raised my maimed hand, protected in its leather glove.
He pointed to his eye patch. ‘You think this fell out by itself?’
Three weeks after that meeting with Magnus at the club, I was sacked. His idea of building a garden for Yun
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