The Harmony Silk Factory

This time we had chosen the old mine near Kellie’s Castle. It was known that only the bravest could swim the biggest pools, and there were few larger than this. We were only fourteen but we did not think twice about swimming it. Night had begun to fall when we got to the pool. I undressed quickly, eager to feel the water. Swimming in the dark felt different, special: the absence of light made my skin look less pale. The sky was blank and black with cloud. There was no moon; nothing was illuminated. Even the ripples of the water as we slid into the pool did not show.

On this swim, as on every other, there was no purpose, no silly race, no “first to the other side wins.” We just swam. A few feet from the edge, where the shelf fell away, I prepared myself for the cold. It gripped my whole body, squeezing the air from my chest. I breathed sharply, chokingly, but I had known that feeling before and so I continued to strike out. Pull. Kick. Pull. Kick. I heard Ruby’s choking breaths echoing my own, but I kept on swimming into the blackness, my eyes closed.

“Jas,” came the first call. Ruby’s voice breathed the word, it did not speak it. “Jas.”

I opened my eyes and searched for him in the infinite darkness. “Ruby?” I said, still swimming forward.

By the time I realised, several seconds later, that he was no longer there, it was too late. I swam furiously in different directions, not knowing where to look, where to turn next. In the moonless night I thought of the chickens we kept in the yard behind the factory. I don’t know why they came into my thoughts. When you entered the coop to select one of them for slaughter, they would run away in zigzags, never knowing where they were going or who they were escaping from. The victim always had a vacant expression on its face, not terrified or even sad, just lost.

Of course it was fate that the first car I met, after walking an hour on the deserted road, was Father’s. It had to be Father who found me, naked and wild-eyed. I shouted out what had happened to Ruby. Whether I made sense or not I don’t know.

“He’s not playing tricks on you,” Father said. That was just how he spoke. Never asked questions, always statements.

“No, I’m sure!” I screamed.

“You’re not telling stories?”

There was no need for me to answer.

“Then he’s dead already,” he said, opening the door for me to get in. “We’ll go back for your clothes tomorrow.”

I was afraid he was angry with me for making him go all the way home before doubling back to Kampar for his evening playing cards. I was afraid, so I said no more.

And that is how my friend Ruby Wong died, more or less.

THIS, THEN, IS WHERE the Kinta Valley lies, trapped between hills and swamps. This is the Valley which became Johnny’s little empire, where he was man and boy, where he started a family, where he was once respected by his people, where he destroyed everything.

4. How the Infamous Johnny Became a Communist — and Other Things

IN 1933, two things happened. The price of rubber fell to 4 cents per pound and Johnny killed a man. It was the first man he killed, and although rumour has it that he did it in self-defence, I believe that the terrible deed was just as likely to have been carried out coldly, with malice aforethought (which I have learnt amounts to murder). In any case, the exact events are unclear, and the records from the Taiping Magistrates Court are somewhat muddled.

At this point in his life, Johnny was working in the Three Horses tin mine just off the Siput-Taiping road. Many young men (and women too) had begun to work in the mines. The price of rubber was now so low that many plantation owners — even English and French ones — were forced out of business. The plantations ceased to operate and were soon overwhelmed by the jungles which surrounded them. The morning bells which roused the workers ceased to toll, and the kerosene lamps which illuminated the scarred bark of the trees were no longer lit. There was no more work to be found in the plantations. So the young people began to drift further and further away from their villages in search of work, and most of them ended up in the mines.

By all accounts, Johnny was a well-regarded boy. He was quiet-spoken, diligent, and unimaginative, and was therefore perfect for working in the mines. Although barely in his teens, Johnny was no longer a manual labourer. He had risen above that. His work did not involve digging into the wet, heavy soil for twelve hours each day, or carrying basketfuls of ore from the bottom of the open-cast pits to be stored, ready for melting. He did not have to do this because, in spite of his lack of intellect, Johnny had one other attribute: a gift for understanding machinery.