Music on the Bamboo Radio Read online

  Nicholas could see nothing. Certainly, no one was hiding there. Yet, just as he turned away, the voice spoke again, loudly, more insistently.

  ‘Yeth-th-th-th,’ it declared, then repeated itself for emphasis. ‘Yeth-th-th-th.’

  It was easier to pinpoint the direction of the sound now so Nicholas took hold of the altar lamp and, cautiously, entered the space. Lying on the smooth flagstones was a snake over a metre long. Its body was curled, but its head was raised up, its neck spread out into a hood. The reptile’s underside was pale cream with two faint black bands a few centimetres below the throat. Nicholas knew what it was: he had seen them in the garden at Peony Villa. It was a cobra and highly venomous.

  Very slowly, Nicholas began to back off. The snake sensed the motion and hissed again, swaying its head slightly backwards and forwards. Nicholas froze.

  If the snake struck, Nicholas knew he was done for. The thought raced through his mind: if quinine, which had been so common before the war, was so difficult to buy now then snake-bite serum would be impossible to obtain. Besides, if you were bitten, you had to have the serum injected within thirty minutes.

  While Nicholas stood as still as a statue, the snake made no further sound and, after a short while, it deflated the hood on its neck. Satisfied Nicholas posed no threat, the reptile slithered round and disappeared into a hole in the wall which served as a drain.

  Nicholas’s knees felt weak and his hands shook as he left the temple. Tang, coming out of the house on the way to his sampan, saw him and came over.

  ‘You very white,’ he observed. ‘You got fever?’

  ‘I’ve just seen a cobra,’ Nicholas said, his voice a little tremulous.

  ‘In temple?’ Tang asked.

  Nicholas nodded.

  ‘Snake live in temple. Long time. When I was young man, snake there.’

  ‘A cobra can’t live that long,’ Nicholas retorted.

  ‘Can do,’ Tang said. ‘Cobra can live thirty year. Bring good luck for my family.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ Nicholas replied, ‘how it can bring good luck.’

  ‘I tell you. This snake live here. We no touch him. He know we no touch him. Dai Kam no go near him, Laan Doh Mao no go near him. He safe here. But this not his house so he must pay us to live here.’

  ‘How can a snake pay you?’ Nicholas interjected.

  Tang laughed and said, ‘Wing-ming, you no understand. You got Chinese name, live with Chinese people, speak Cantonese but you still English in you heart. That good. You must stay English for when the war end. This why I talk English to you all time. Now,’ he continued, ‘I tell you. Chinese idea sometimes seem crazy to English people. We say snake lucky, and you say that crazy Chinese talk. But Chinese talk not crazy. You think, this snake live here. He pay rent. How? We no touch him, he eat rat and mouse. If he eat rat and mouse, then rat and mouse no eat our rice, no eat our flour, no bite us, no make us sick. So…’

  ‘Snake lucky,’ Nicholas cut in.

  ‘Snake very lucky,’ Tang answered. ‘Now I go catch fish.’

  Nicholas watched from the terrace as Tang launched the sampan and set off towards the promontory. For the first time, he realized there was substance to Chinese sayings and proverbs. The beliefs must make sense. It was just that the truth behind them was somehow disguised by folklore.

  He ran through a few superstitions in his mind. Bats were lucky: they would be good because they ate mosquitoes which could give malaria. It was very unlucky to have a pet cat stolen: that could mean the mice could breed. It was always wise to have a clump of bamboo growing near a house: this would not only provide building materials and poles to carry things on but it would also provide a home for snakes – like the cobra.

  If, Nicholas reasoned, there was a sound piece of common sense behind such superstitious beliefs, was there also an argument for accepting omens? Had the snake been a sign? After all, it had said yeth-th-th-th long before it saw him. When he was in front of the altar, he was no threat to the reptile. So why had it hissed?

  In his room, Nicholas knelt down and pulled his photograph out from its crevice behind the kang; ever since the day when the Japanese had come, he had kept it hidden just in case. He wiped the glass, sat down on the doorstep and held it in both hands. The sun played upon the silver frame.

  Nicholas gazed hard at the picture. He knew the people in the photograph were his parents but he could not actually picture them in his mind. He had long since forgotten what they really looked like and, try as he might, he could not recall the sound of their voices. The only firm memory he had of them was the photograph he was holding in his hands. This saddened but did not upset him. He had come to terms with their absence and did not miss them. Not exactly. Not any longer.

  Yet, as they looked up at him from the photograph, and he looked down on them, he felt the strong tug of love. Wherever they were – and, deep inside himself, he refused to believe they were dead – he knew they were thinking of him, perhaps at that very moment.

  ‘What do you think, Dad?’ he asked, out loud.

  It was the first time he had ever spoken to the photograph. Feeling a little self-conscious, he looked around to be sure none of the others was in sight. Nothing moved on the terrace, not even Dai Kam. The figures in the silver frame were just as immobile, frozen in time and the chemicals of the photograph.

  Yet, as he gazed at the picture, Nicholas heard one sound in his head.

  It was yeth-th-th-th.

  Not long after sun-up Nicholas waited, his varnished cane hat in his hands, as Tai Lo Fu and ten other men, including Ah Kwan, arrived at the end of the bridge. None of them looked the least like a fighter: they were more like peasant farmers, fishermen and coolies. One of them even carried a rice flail whilst another had a wooden rake balanced over his shoulder. A third had a basket of woven straw, its top sewn closed with cord. Not one appeared to be armed.

  ‘So, you ready to fight?’ Tai Lo Fu asked, speaking to Nicholas in English for the first time.

  ‘Yes,’ Nicholas said, his voice determined.

  ‘Good! Now you can fight for your father.’

  They left the bridge together but, halfway to Sai Kung, they halted and, at Tai Lo Fu’s order, split into five separate groups.

  ‘This is for safety,’ Ah Kwan explained. ‘The Japanese have made a law that no more than three people can walk at one time together. If you see any Tai Lo Fu soldiers today you do not greet them, do not talk to them. You do not know them. You understand?’ He looked at Nicholas’s hat and added, ‘Wear your hat now.’

  ‘I understand,’ Nicholas said and, putting on his hat, he joined Tai Lo Fu and Ah Kwan who set off first. They did not walk quickly or even purposefully, but ambled along as if they were out for a stroll. Once, they even stopped to admire the view.

  ‘Ho leng!’ Tai Lo Fu exclaimed. ‘Very beautiful. This why we fight. To keep China looking beautiful.’

  At mid-morning, they reached Sai Kung. The fishing village was sleepy in the hot sun. The market was not due to open until the afternoon because the Japanese had done away with the traditional early morning gathering when they had forbidden night fishing.

  Tai Lo Fu went towards the tea-shop where Nicholas and Ah Mee had rested on their flight to buy quinine but Ah Kwan guided Nicholas to the shadow of a nearby house.

  ‘We don’t drink tea,’ he explained. ‘Not yet. Wait a few minutes. Tai Lo Fu will talk first.’

  The partisan leader sat down at one of the tables standing under a tree and stretched his legs out in front of him. The proprietor with the twisted ear came out but he did not leer or demand that Tai Lo Fu order a bowl of tea. Instead, he gave a short bow and spoke to him in a muted voice. This conversation over, Tai Lo Fu beckoned Ah Kwan and Nicholas to join him.

  ‘No Japanese have been here today,’ Tai Lo Fu said in a low voice, ‘but they’ve caught a Wang Ching-wei man.’

  ‘What’s a Wang Ching-wei?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘Wang
Ching-wei is a bad Chinese man,’ Ah Kwan explained. ‘He is a friend to the Japanese. His men tell the Japanese what good Chinese people do. They would tell the Japanese that Tai Lo Fu is in Sai Kung today. Then the Japanese would come and kill him.’

  The tea-house owner served three bowls of tea, for which he demanded no payment, and handed Tai Lo Fu a two-page propaganda newspaper printed in Chinese but with a Japanese flag above the headline. No one spoke. Ah Kwan leaned back in his chair. Tai Lo Fu read the newspaper, snorting every now and then, muttering, ‘Laap saap!’ – which meant ‘rubbish’ – every time he read a blatant Japanese lie. Two of the partisans approached along the village street, one of them the man with the rake. Nicholas ignored them.

  When he had finished his tea, Tai Lo Fu folded the newspaper and called to the tea-house owner. The man closed his business and led them through the village, across some paddyfields and over a stream to a farmhouse surrounded on three sides by trees. Looking around to ensure they were not being observed, the tea-house owner knocked twice on the door. It was immediately opened.

  Stepping inside with the men, Nicholas found himself in a large room. Against the walls were piled bamboo canes, farming implements and the remains of a cart. The air smelled cool and fusty. From a doorway at the rear came a grunting sound. It reminded Nicholas of the pigs at Sek Wan.

  Following Tai Lo Fu through the door, he discovered this sound came not from a pig but a man. Wearing only a pair of shorts, he had been tied to an old cart wheel with his arms and legs outspread. His body was covered in bruises and cuts, and his face was badly swollen. His chest was slick and shiny with sweat and blood. In front of him stood two other men stripped to the waist. One held a stout bamboo pole.

  ‘This is the Wang Ching-wei man,’ Ah Kwan said. ‘He is a traitor.’

  Tai Lo Fu moved in front of the prisoner and, putting his head close to the swollen face, asked a question in Cantonese, in a soft, wheedling voice. He sounded almost like a child trying to coax one more sweet out of a parent who thought it had had enough.

  The prisoner muttered something. Tai Lo Fu leaned forward. The prisoner repeated what he said. Tai Lo Fu smiled ironically then stepped back.

  ‘You understand English?’ Tai Lo Fu enquired.

  The prisoner attempted to speak but he could only mumble.

  ‘I tell you something, Wang Ching-wei man,’ Tai Lo Fu declared, speaking now in English. ‘Japanese no can win war. We win. Communist fighter win. Chinese people win.’ He leaned towards the prisoner. ‘You want know why I talk English. I tell you. You see this boy?’ Tai Lo Fu turned, taking Nicholas by the hand, drawing him nearer the prisoner and removing his hat. ‘You tell him you name,’ he ordered.

  ‘My name is Wing-ming,’ Nicholas announced in Cantonese.

  ‘No,’ Tai Lo Fu said. ‘You tell you real name. Speak in English.’

  ‘My name is Nicholas,’ Nicholas admitted, not wanting to look at the prisoner yet staring at him with a fascination he could not control.

  ‘This,’ Tai Lo Fu went on grandly, ‘is English boy. Live Hong Kong all time you Japanese friend here. He fighter for me, bring my men good luck.’ His voice changed. ‘I know what you say. You say, if Tai Lo Fu got English boy, how many English men he got? I tell you. I got plenty men. In China. Chinese men, English men, American men. We got gun, we got airplane, we got bomb. One day, no long time, Wang Ching-wei no more. Japanese soldier no more.’

  He let go of Nicholas’s hand and raised his arm. Nicholas thought he was going to strike the prisoner. The prisoner also thought so and flinched in anticipation of the blow. Tai Lo Fu lowered his arm and laughed humourlessly before turning away to speak briefly in Cantonese to the two guards.

  They left the building then and returned across the paddyfield. For some way, Nicholas was silent, shocked at what he had seen. He knew what was going to happen. Tai Lo Fu had spoken in English because the traitor would not live to report Nicholas’s presence.

  As the sun went down, they reached the outskirts of Kowloon. They approached it not from the direction by which Nicholas and Ah Mee had come, down the road in the lorry, but over a pass in the Nine Dragon Mountains which ran east to west along the northern edge of the town.

  The climb up to the pass had been hard going but the descent was worse. Tai Lo Fu and Ah Kwan had not kept to paths but, in places, simply made their way downhill in a straight line. Nicholas’s legs had ached as he fought against the slope, stopping himself from slipping or being forced into a downhill run he would not be able to check.

  They made their way into a ravine filled with bushes in the scrub-covered foothills below the mountains.

  ‘This is where we wait,’ Ah Kwan told Nicholas. ‘The other men will come soon. You rest now.’

  Nicholas leaned back on a smooth rock. He shut his eyes yet did not doze off for his mind remained alert with the anticipation of the mission which lay ahead of them.

  Within an hour, the rest of Tai Lo Fu’s men arrived. The one carrying the woven basket opened it to produce some bottles of water, buns of steamed bread and thin strips of stringy dried meat which were handed round. Nicholas found the meat tough but, if chewed for some minutes until it softened, delicious.

  ‘What meat is this?’ he asked Ah Kwan who was chewing a length of it with obvious relish.

  ‘Mah lo,’ Ah Kwan informed him.

  ‘Mah lo?’ Nicholas repeated. The words rang a bell but he could not remember the meaning.

  ‘Monkey,’ Ah Kwan said. ‘It will make you strong.’ He flexed his biceps muscle to prove the point.

  ‘Maybe make you like a monkey,’ Nicholas replied and, twisting his arm around, he scratched under his armpit in a simian fashion. The men chuckled quietly at this antic.

  ‘You are a funny boy!’ Tai Lo Fu remarked. ‘It is good you make us laugh. Soon, we shall not be laughing but fighting.’

  Once they had eaten and drunk the water, which was tepid from being in the basket all day, Tai Lo Fu brought out an oblong of paper upon which had been drawn a rough map of Kowloon. In the centre of the map was a circle in red ink and, in the centre of the circle, a railway bridge.

  So, Nicholas thought, it was not a train they were to sabotage but the whole railway line.

  Looking over Ah Kwan’s shoulder, Nicholas briefly studied the map. He knew the bridge. It crossed over Waterloo Road not far from King George V School at which he had spent just one term before the Japanese invasion. He had passed under the bridge every day on his way to school, riding in a Number 7 bus, alighting at the stop beyond it.

  Until now, Nicholas had scarcely given school a thought. Certainly, he had not missed it. It was not that he disliked his lessons nor that he had no friends. He enjoyed mathematics and geography and had had many friends, although most of them had left Hong Kong for Australia just before the Japanese invaded. Once the enemy had landed and the school closed, he had been out of touch with the world of education. The war had been, in some respects, like the holidays: once they began, memory of school quickly faded. And, he realized, sitting in the ravine surrounded by partisan fighters preparing to sabotage the bridge, he had learnt a lot more about life at Sek Wan than he ever would have in a classroom.

  Tai Lo Fu’s plan of attack was simple. They would split into two groups. One would deal with the pair of sentries who sometimes guarded the bridge. This group would then provide cover for the smaller, explosives party who would get in under the superstructure of the bridge and plant the charge. With this done, they would retreat to a building near by, across Foch Avenue, which ran parallel to the railway line at the foot of the embankment. From there, they would blow the bridge.

  It all looked so easy but Nicholas was puzzled by one thing. He mentioned it when Tai Lo Fu had finished outlining his plan.

  ‘How can you fight,’ Nicholas enquired, ‘and blow up a railway bridge if you don’t have guns and high explosive?’

  Tai Lo Fu grinned and, asking Nicholas to lean forward, moved th
e rock against which he had been lying. In a hollow behind it were four rifles, six revolvers, an ammunition box and two packets tied up with twine.

  ‘We have them,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye then, lifting one of the two packages, he handed it to Nicholas. ‘You take this one.’

  As the twilight deepened, they moved out of the ravine and headed towards a suburb with wide residential streets where, before the war, rich people had lived. Nicholas was familiar with the area: his parents had had friends who lived there in a house with a swimming pool and a croquet lawn.

  Now, he was shocked by the state of general decrepitude. Broken windows were patched up with cardboard or paper, gardens were a riot of weeds or unkempt bushes, lawns had been dug up for paltry-looking vegetable patches, walls were missing chunks of plaster and the streets were pot-holed. In the grounds of one particularly fine house, the tennis court had been turned into a chicken run. A few scrawny hens scratched at the earth in the last of the daylight before joining the rest of their flock in a makeshift hen-house constructed out of a Morris van with flat tyres and a smashed windscreen.

  In darkness, the partisans slipped across the road down which Nicholas had fled that fateful Christmas Day. Not far to their right ran the railway line but they did not approach it. According to Ah Kwan, who had reconnoitred all six railway bridges in Kowloon, the first two nearest the mountains were too heavily guarded to make an attack feasible. The third provided no footholds to the steel girders. The fourth, however, was only lightly patrolled: presumably, Nicholas guessed, the Japanese thought this was less likely to be a target because it was farther from the safety of the foothills. Furthermore, there were steps up the railway embankment which might allow access to the underside of the bridge.

  The street lights were not working which gave the partisan band added cover. In less than fifteen minutes, they were crouched by a building at the end of Foch Avenue, studying the bridge.