of the people in the shop who dared to speak.
‘Where is Mr Tan?’ the White Woman said.
‘He is away today – on business,’ Johnny said. ‘I am in charge today.’
The White Woman approached the counter and laid her purse on the glass cabinets displaying lace handkerchiefs. Johnny noticed the soft black satin of the purse. Across the black surface, little beads were stitched meticulously into the shape of a dragon chasing a flaming pearl across a stormy sea.
‘What would you like, madam?’
‘Show me something beautiful,’ the White Woman said, looking at Johnny. ‘Do you think you can do that?’
Johnny looked her in the eye. ‘I think so,’ he said.
He moved slowly from one end of the shop to the other, touching bales of cloth, feeling their texture before deciding whether to take them or leave them. Sometimes he unfurled a length of fabric against the light and narrowed his eyes. No one in the shop knew exactly what he was looking for – he seemed to be searching for something hidden All this time the White Woman watched him with increasing fascination, her initial irritation beginning to fade. She could not figure out what this curious young man was doing. There seemed to be a mysterious logic to this actions – but what?
‘Here,’ he said at last, ‘these will make you happy.’
‘What’s this one?’ she said, feeling some cloth between her fingers. It was thin and silky with a single cream-coloured flower printed across it.
‘It’s French.’
‘It doesn’t look French to me. The pattern isn’t very rich.’
‘But it is French, madam, the very latest, I am told. You can wear it next to your body, even in the hot months. See how it touches your skin,’ Johnny said, gently sweeping it over her hand.
‘I’d use it for tablecloths.’
‘This,’ said Johnny draping another length of cloth over his shoulder, ‘is very special.’
‘It has no pattern at all.’
‘That is true. But see how the light shines on it, and through it?’
‘Am I to wear that?’
‘Of course not. But your windows – are they big? I thought so. Use this to make curtains.’
‘Curtains? Without a pattern?’
‘I have seen them in the latest American magazines,’ Johnny said, holding up the cloth in front of his face. ‘I can see you but can you see me?’
‘No.’
‘Next, my favourite, something so beautiful it will take your breath away,’ Johnny said, undoing a brown parcel.
‘It’s batik,’ the White Woman said, plainly and somewhat quizzically.
He pushed a plate of pink lotus cakes towards her and refilled her teacup.
‘We are exporting this,’ Johnny said, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘to Europe. No one knows about this yet. This is specially made for us –’
‘But it looks like ordinary batik.’
‘A batch of the very same material with exactly the same pattern has just been sent to Port Wellesley for shipment to London, Paris, America.’
‘I see.’
The people in the shop were intrigued. This was the first they had ever heard of batik being shipped to Europe. Their minds raced. Was it possible that the same sarongs used by their grandmothers would be used in London? How did Tiger keep this secret?
The order was placed, the notes counted out and the goods dispatched that same day to the White Woman’s home.
‘You sold her batik,’ Tiger said over and over again, reaching for the whisky when he learned what had happened. ‘She will never come back to the shop again.’ His mood lightened, however, when he realised that Johnny had sold the entire stock of unsellable batik which had languished for many months at the back of the stock cupboards. He had also got rid of a large quantity of cheap Chinese gauze at a highly inflated price. The peony-printed satin, an expensive lapse in Tiger’s judgement (he had over-ordered from the new mill in Singapore before he had even seen a sample), was sold without a single cent’s discount.
After a few days a note arrived from the White Woman, thanking the Tiger Brand Trading Company for always keeping beautiful yet practical textiles in stock. The note singled out Johnny for special praise, and Tiger proudly showed it to all his customers. He also began to regard Johnny in a new light.
During the time he worked in the shop, Johnny lived in Tiger’s house along with several other young men and women, all of whom (so Johnny understood) worked in one way or another for the party. Although they were all employed at Tiger’s shop, their paths did not otherwise cross. In the evenings they went their separate ways, disappearing into the night and reappearing before daybreak for their communal breakfasts, always taken at 5.15. Johnny wondered what kind of things they did after they slipped out of the house at night. Attending passionate lectures, plotting attacks on administrative buildings across the valley, spying on VIPs in Ipoh, cleaning machine guns, setting booby traps deep in the jungle. Maybe they were even killing people. The thought made him shiver with excitement. He wanted to be with them.
Johnny himself had not yet experienced life as a true communist. Up to that point he had, of course, worked in many places run by people with communist leanings, but he had never yet been approached to do anything. Someone had given him a leaflet once. The words seemed cold on the thin paper, and did not arouse in him any feelings of duty. He tried reading some of the books on Tiger’s shelves. He reached, first of all, for Karl Marx, though he did not know why. Perhaps he had heard that name before, or perhaps the simple, strong sound of the words as he read them slowly to himself compelled him to take it into his room. Das. Ka-pi-tal. He said it several times in the privacy of his room. His lips felt strange when they spoke, and he felt curiously exhilarated. But he had not understood anything in the book. Even the Chinese version was beyond his comprehension. What the words said was plain enough, but the meaning behind them remained hidden from him. He grew to prefer the English version. Every night he would look at the book, reading a few lines in his poor English, hoping he would suddenly find a trapdoor into that vast world he knew lay beyond the page. Somehow it made him feel more important, more grown-up, as if he was part of a bigger place.
One Friday afternoon when all the shops were closed and the muezzin’s call drifted thinly across town, Johnny came across one of the other men in the garden. He was resting in the shade of a chiku tree, legs apart, sharpening a parang with smooth, strong strokes. His legs and bare torso were flecked with cut grass and his hands rough with dirt.
‘I need to light a bonfire,’ Johnny said, ‘to burn grass and old leaves. When will you be finished?’
‘I’m finished,’ the man (Gun was his name) said.
Johnny started for the far end of the garden beyond the fruit trees where he kept the tools. The steady metallic ring of the sharpening blade cut the hot afternoon
