The gunman fired at virtually point-blank range, but father had already begun to drop his body, pushing, diving, scrambling headfirst into the mass of bodies around him. The bullet ripped off his epaulette before smashing into the TV set, exploding it in a colourful shower of blue lights and silver sparks. As he fell, Father pulled at the legs of a table next to him, obscuring the assassin’s view for a split second. All around me, men began to run for cover. I watched them but I could not hear their screams. I watched in silence as the gunman cocked the pistol again. This time I saw it clearly: a matte-black.38, old and well worn. I also saw the man. He was Chinese, aged anywhere from eighteen to forty, dressed in khaki trousers and a white cotton shirt. His hair was cut short back-and-sides and combed with a centre parting. He was dressed like every other man in the room: I would not be able to recognise him if I saw him again.
He fired once more. I do not know how it happened, how the bullet found its way to Frankie’s stomach. I saw the old man collapse, doubling over and sinking to his knees before falling to the ground. The side of his head hit the concrete hard; the sound it made cracked loudly in my ears. The third shot was aimless and desperate. It shattered a glass cabinet full of coffee beans, filling the air with the smoky-sweet smell of rough Javanese coffee.
The gunman pushed past me as he fled. His arms were slick with sweat. His clothes smelled of ripe fruit and mud. I felt his hot, heavy breath on my face and heard the thin wheeze in his chest. In a second, the shop emptied. I watched as people disappeared into the bright, dusty street, melting into the quiet afternoon.
I went to Father. His mouth rose in a half-smile.
“Did you see the Merdeka?” he said.
I nodded. Through the black blood and angry flesh on his shoulder, I caught a glimpse of bone. It was pure, glowing white. I moved to the other side of him, trying to hold him and drag him to the front of the shop. He was heavy, immovable. His eyes closed slowly and he chuckled so faintly that if my face had not been next to his I may never have heard it.
I don’t know quite how I managed it, but finally I got him into the back seat of the Mercedes. I had just turned sixteen and I had never driven before. Somehow, though, I made it, stuttering through the white empty streets to the General Hospital. The nurses there put their arms around my shoulders and told me not to worry. They brought me warm bottles of Green Spot and stale curry puffs.
“Can you believe it, all by himself, you know. He got his father here all by himself,” I heard one of the nurses say in the next room.
“He’s not his father’s son for nothing,” whispered another.
Later that evening, as I sat waiting for news of Father’s condition, a nurse brought me the blue batik shirt Father had been wearing. It had been badly damaged in the shooting: only one sleeve remained and a few of its buttons were missing. But the people in the hospital had washed it and pressed it and folded it neatly. It was only when you held it up to the light that you could see the faint outlines of the washed-out bloodstains.
There were no witnesses other than me. No one else admitted to being there. People were afraid to get mixed up in police business. They did not want to become targets themselves for the dwindling but by now hard-line group of Communist guerillas who roamed the darkest reaches of the jungle, where even the British army could not get to.
In failing to kill my father, these Communists only succeeded in strengthening his aura of invincibility. People began to say that Johnny could not be killed, that the bullet passed straight through his heart but still he lived to rule the Valley. That is because he did not have a heart, other people said. He was otherworldly, not flesh and blood at all but a phantom. His son was half-man, half-ghost. Soon I noticed that every time we walked into a shop or any other public place, a hush would descend and men would lower their gaze. Father began to be more casual in his behaviour — he stopped carrying a gun himself, and while many of his accomplices had armed bodyguards, he strolled freely down the main streets of all the towns in the Valley.
His right shoulder hung in an odd way now, stiff and unmoving, jerking from time to time with an occasional spasm, which made it look as though the shoulder was trying to bring itself level with the good one. You might have thought that this incident changed Johnny. Perhaps the spirit of Independence infected him with notions of human pride and sympathy, but it did not. He grew even more withdrawn, more inside himself.
