I felt the sadness of that day when I visited the caves myself. I went there on the day I found out what my father had done. I stood in a corner of the innermost cave, tucking myself in beside a small shrine, hiding behind the many-armed figures which guarded its entrance, just as Johnny’s men must have done that dreadful day. My shoulder scraped flakes of peeling paint onto the damp floor. The smell of camphor soot filled my head and I closed my eyes. I stayed, as those men had, until the last of the visitors had gone and the afternoon swiftly became evening. The men had mingled for some hours among the other visitors to the caves. I could see them all around me, lurking in the shadows, barely perceptible in my mind’s eye. They glanced at one another now and then, catching one another’s eye for a brief moment before moving on, gazing emptily at the painted walls and ceilings. Slowly, they established who was present. Fifteen leaders, each with several lieutenants, forty-four men in all.
The most important of all, though, was not yet there.
In the heart of each man, doubt began to creep. Where was he? Had he been caught and killed at last? Forty-four was a very bad number, very unlucky for all Chinese, even Communists. It meant: death.
Night fell quickly, as it always did, but this time it felt blacker and deeper than ever before.
One man broke the silence, whispering out into the dark. “Friends, comrades, who is here?”
I am, the whispers multiplied, coming together as they did. Brief silence, all men waiting for the voice they most wanted to hear.
Hands on pistols: a figure approaching from the mouth of the outer caves, barely outlined in the darkness. Is it him? someone asked. I don’t know. Can’t tell. Listen. A steady, heavy tread, confident, afraid of nothing. No man had a walk like that. No man except Johnny.
The men relaxed their grips on their weapons. None could see the smiles on the others’ faces. They stood huddled together in the dark, lambs awaiting their shepherd.
A flash of light, blinding, colourful. Smoke. Gas! Quick, boys! They dropped to the floor, fumbling and clutching at their clothes, tearing off their shirts to cover their mouths and noses. Pistols drawn, they searched for the invisible danger through stinging eyes. The thundering, whipping, cutting crack of machine-gun fire.
Johnny, where’s Johnny?
They fired into the smoke, slowly choking and suffocating. Some of them stood up and were instantly felled.
Fight on, fight on, they urged each other. They did not fear death.
Johnny will save us.
That is what they believed right to the end.
One by one they were cut down. A few ran screaming from the burning fog and were bayonetted by Japanese soldiers as they emerged from the mouth of the cave. When at last the smoke began to thin, the Japanese searched the caves with torches. The streams of light danced on the wet and bloody walls and shone in the eyes of the survivors, who were arrested and taken away. They spent many weeks in Kempeitai jails, where two of them committed suicide: one broke a spoon in two and cut his own throat with the jagged pieces, and the other threw himself into a dry well in the prison compound. The other survivors, for the sake of a few pathetic pieces of information, suffered torture of varying lengths of time and severity. And then all were executed, either beheaded with a sword or shot in the back of the head.
The Malayan Anti-Japanese People’s Army would never be the same again. Twenty-nine of the most important Communists in the country were killed at the caves, and another fifteen arrested and executed. Of the sixteen commanders only one survived. One. The Famous Chinaman Called Johnny.
Rumours (no doubt perpetuated by Johnny) spread quickly. The most popular version of the story was that Johnny had miraculously escaped the Japanese ambush by fighting his way through a cordon of soldiers and had scaled a sheer limestone crag a hundred feet high before disappearing into the forest. Others said that Johnny had been seen in the heart of the Valley, fifty miles from the caves, late that afternoon; that he had found out about the Japanese plans to attack the caves and had tried to use his connections to prevent the massacre. And there were a few who insisted that they had seen Johnny late that evening, his clothes bloody and riddled with bullet holes; he had simply walked through a hail of bullets and emerged unscathed. There was nothing the Japanese or anyone could do to him. People reminded themselves what had happened when Tiger’s shop burnt down. Remembering the events of that day gave them comfort. Their trust was safe with Johnny.
