Mary, who’s been trying to stop Anil for the last half hour, keeps her temper.
‘He won’t stop,’ she says. ‘But it’ll be all right. There weren’t any soldiers around this morning.’
‘Really? You didn’t see any at all? No sentries or anything?’ Sister Gerta seems curiously excited by this. She leans forward, her hands clenched into the rough serge skirts that bunch around her hips.
‘None at all.’ Mary’s about to ask why Gerta cares, when Anil suddenly falls quiet. ‘See? He’s stopped,’ she announces with satisfaction.
‘Let-ter,’ Anil says carefully, and points at Sister Gerta’s bunchy skirts.
‘We’re delivering the letters, Anil.’ Mary’s no more patient than she ever was or will be, and the scouring hilltop wind is getting on her nerves. If she doesn’t quite roll her eyes at her brother then she certainly comes close, and perhaps that’s why she misses the quick movement as Sister Gerta brings an envelope from her skirt pocket and imprints a kiss on it.
‘Mary, will you deliver this?’
Mary looks up at the envelope in Gerta’s hand. ‘Will I …?’
She steps forward to take a closer look at this envelope. The envelope’s a delicate cream colour and it’s addressed to Father Narayan, of the La Salle Boys School in Lipis.
Mary shakes her head. ‘It isn’t chopped.’
The envelope, scented with jasmine and rosewater, hasn’t been chopped; it has no censorship stamp. That means the Japanese soldiers haven’t approved the contents and it would be a crime for Mary to deliver it.
‘I’m sorry, Gerta,’ she says. ‘We can’t take it.’
Gerta looks stricken. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘If there aren’t any sentries … please?’
Mary’s tired. She’s been up since four o’clock wrangling some breakfast into her son-daughter and doing her brother’s post round. She’s cold, she’s hungry, she has an ulcer on her leg which isn’t healing. It’s been a hard few months for Mary, and who can blame her for not paying quite enough attention to Gerta, standing there under the frangipanis with her skin white as dirty china and her eyes pleading.
‘Just go down and get it chopped, Gerta,’ she says impatiently. ‘Don’t be embarrassed, the censors read all sorts of things. Love letters and everything; yours can’t be that bad.’ (Oh, Mary. She’s never been one to think things through.)
Mary hands the empty sack to Anil and turns to walk back to the bicycle. The handlebars stick, just a little, and by the time Mary’s got them free, Anil and Gerta are standing side-by-side with their hands behind their backs and gigantic, cream-fed smiles on both their faces. Anil has the sack slung over one shoulder and Gerta’s letter has disappeared.
‘What’s got into both of you?’ Mary asks. ‘Come on, Anil, time to go. I’m sorry we couldn’t take your letter, Sister Gerta.’
But Gerta doesn’t seem to mind, shrugging and smiling as she waves them both off down the hill. Mary puts her feet up on the bicycle forks and coasts, enjoying the feeling of wind beating into her face.
‘Ma-ry.’ Anil taps her on the shoulder as they reach the bottom of the slope. ‘Go to Lipis-town? See the schoolboys?’
Anil loves everything to do with school. He never got to go, of course, but he used to press his nose to the compound gate to watch as boys in striped ties carried their boxy school satchels along the road. He’s always particularly liked the yellow-and-red stripes of the La Salle school uniform, even going so far as to beg for a blazer of his very own.
Mary smiles back at him over her shoulder. ‘Very well,’ she calls. ‘We’ll go and see the school.’
She starts pedalling again and swings them onto the narrow road that leads out to the school. It’s at the end of a rutted lane, with low pavilions spreading themselves out behind cricket pitches. Like many of the schools in Pahang, it isn’t actually open. There aren’t enough Japanese-speaking teachers, and schools aren’t permitted to teach in any other language. The head, Father Narayan, fills his days by setting out unmarked blackboards and counting his chalks.
‘Pity Gerta didn’t have her letter chopped,’ Mary calls to Anil as she pedals the bike over dried-up mud. ‘We could have dropped it in to Father Narayan now –’
She breaks off. There’s a Japanese sentry standing under the angsana tree by the school corner. His hat’s tweaked into a stiff fold and a gun hangs from his polished belt.
Mary stops the bicycle and pulls Anil off after her. ‘Bow!’ she hisses, but he doesn’t move.
The soldier puts his thumbs into his belt and begins to walk towards them, each leg swinging like a pendulum.
‘Anil!’ Mary gives him a sharp, hard pinch. The sentry’s smiling, with a clear and hard grin that doesn’t bode well. ‘Bow!’
Anil drops his head and Mary sinks with relief into her own bow. Don’t look at us, keep walking by, she thinks and then just as the soldier reaches them she hears Anil draw in a breath.
‘Bastards, bastards,’ he sings. ‘Kempetai bastards.’
The soldier stops. For a long, heart-stretching second he doesn’t move. Mary’s holding her breath – don’t understand English, she’s praying, please don’t understand – and then Anil chirps again, almost to himself.
‘Bastards, bastards, Kempetai –’
The soldier pulls back his fist, swinging it with a brutal punch into Anil’s face. Anil crumples to the ground and a second punch from the soldier sends Mary lurching away. She lands on the bike, feeling the spokes pierce her leg and her mouth fill with tiny, clattering stones that turn out to be her own teeth. The soldier stamps down hard on Anil’s head and Mary’s sure she can hear something crack. She scrambles to her knees, crawls up to the soldier’s flying boots.
‘Please,’ she says. She puts her head on the ground. ‘Please,’ and then there’s a sudden silence.
Mary lifts her head up, blood brimming from her lips. The soldier’s picked up Anil’s gunny sack and is feeling inside it. He grabs at something – but there’s nothing there
