The guard shook his head and remained firm, despite threats and pleading from the couple. Finally the man whispered to the woman who clutched his arm but nodded. They spoke to their dogs softly, stroking and nuzzling them. Then the man kissed his wife and watched as she walked up the gangplank. When she was gone from view, he reached into his pocket and took out a revolver. He led the dogs through the masses of people to the far end of the pier. He was alone when he returned to the gangplank a few minutes later, his cheeks damp with tears.

"Why did the man at the gate ask you for our luggage?" I asked my father.

"I was given an order by the military to pack up our belongings and travel passes to board one of the last ships to Singapore," he said. "We were ordered not to tell any of our local staff or friends. The British are leaving the Malayans to the Japs. We are all running away. Just like that. Even Mr. Scott has left. And Henry Cross has sent his sons to Australia." He stood on the edge of the pier, the hull of the Straits Steamship Company's SS Pangkor looming over us like a wave about to break. "I can't believe it. Is this how it will end?"

"Are we going too?" I asked, wondering if he had finally seen my side of things.

He shook his head. "No. Not like this. Never like this. We'll stay. We'll keep the flag flying. We'll keep our family name untainted, and we will not lose face."

I wondered if a lifetime spent in Penang had made him think like an Oriental.

"This is the last ship. After she leaves, we'll be on our own," he said.

The crowd pushed and jostled us as they surged toward the gangplank. I felt melancholic as I watched them board. Very soon there was no one left, no one, except the two of us.

He held my arm as the gangplank was raised. I resisted a sudden urge to run to it and shout to the sailors to let me board, let me escape the mess my life had turned into. The steamer sounded its whistle and a low throbbing vibrated the platform as it pulled out. People lined the deck, looking down on us. There were no colorful streamers, no balloons, no laughter. A young boy held his mother's hand and raised his arm and waved a farewell. I took a step away from my father, to the very edge of the pier and returned his wave. It was a farewell not only to a place but to a way of life, a time of life, and I thought the little boy knew even then that the days he had grown up in, the days he had played in, lived in, would never again return.

Although my father had refused secret passage to Singapore, many of the Europeans had accepted it. Overnight the large British civil and military population disappeared, leaving their servants and friends feeling betrayed. The sense of abandonment would never heal and the British lost an incalculable amount of face when they left.

The island became ghostly. Many of the locals headed for the jungles and remote villages in the hills, hoping to escape the Japanese soldiers. Those who remained in town walked about in confusion.

The bombs whistled down onto the streets again in the days that followed, blowing up buildings and killing hundreds of people. I was in the office, attempting to destroy more documents, when I heard and felt the explosions. They rocked through the building even though they seemed a mile away. Going to the window, which was opened to catch the breeze despite the smell from the roads, I saw a bank of smoke rising above the British army barracks. Overhead, squadrons of planes circled like birds of prey. People began screaming in the streets. More explosions followed, rattling the windowpanes, sending jagged fractures through them like forks of frozen lightning. For the first time since the war began a sense of real fear overcame me. Soon the raw, pungent smell of smoke drifted to my nostrils and I shut the window, unable to breathe or think.

The phone rang, startling me. It was such an incongruous sound, the ringing. The town was being destroyed and here was my phone pealing away. I stared at it dumbly. Finally I picked it up.

It was Endo-san. "What are you doing in the office?"

"Just tidying up," I answered weakly.

"Go home. The town is no longer safe. The troops will be coming in soon. Leave now." He hung up.

The troops were coming in. I had been expecting this but still it seemed not possible. We had an army, well equipped and well trained. Surely they were capable of putting up a fight?

Another explosion shook me. This time it was closer. And then another. I had to go home. God only knew if they were bombing Batu Ferringhi. I ran out into the street, and almost decided to return to the office and hide.

The road was pocked with craters. Some cars had gone front first into them, their rears sticking up like the sterns of listing ships I had seen at the harbor. Blood was curdling on the tarmac, thick as engine oil. Windows all around had shattered and shards of glass were sprinkled on the torn bodies like crystallized rain.

There was a sound of rushing wind, a flash of singeing light and a section of the building of Empire Trading was ripped away. I was thrown to the ground, where I did an ukemi fall and came up on my feet, the explosion disorienting me, my ears singing like a choir conducted by a madman.

I ran to the shed behind the building where the Punjabi guard usually kept his bicycle. I hoped he had left it there when he had evacuated to the hills. To my relief I found it leaning against the wall. All of his clothes were gone and only his charpoy, the canvas folding bed he slept on, had been left behind.

I got onto the bicycle and pedaled home through roads crowded with trishaws and carts as people fled the town. Everyone had the same idea, to get out and hide in the hills or the distant villages. The sun fell like a whip on my shoulders and my shirt began to stick to my skin. I heard a new concatenation of explosions behind me, rippling the ground and the innermost warrens of our hearts.

I did not see a single army official along the way and I wondered where they had gone, whether they had already deserted us. I picked up a straw hat dropped by a woman, glad to have some protection from the noonday sun, my heart aching as I saw the faces of terror around me.

On the Esplanade I stopped, as did many of us. Out on the channel two Brewster Buffalo airplanes-from the airfield in Butterworth, I guessed-were putting up a fight against the Japanese planes, but they were heavily outnumbered. Tracer spat like flashes of light as the Japanese planes pursued the Buffaloes. One of the Buffaloes burst into flames. As it fell the fire became greedy and, like a flaming mouth, swallowed it from tip to tail. It sank into the sea and we could hear the loud splash and the serpentine hissing as the flames were swallowed in turn.

The remaining Buffalo banked and flew away and I let out a moan along with the hundreds who had been cheering them silently in our hearts. Years afterward I learned that they were all that was left of our air defense: two aged Buffaloes against the Japanese air force.

It was only days later that I discovered the British army had already left, had deserted us when it appeared to them that the string of Japanese victories in the northern states would extend all the way south to Johor. They had left behind a mere handful of junior officers; the rest had sailed to Singapore. That was where the final stand would be made. Not here, not in Penang. No stand would be made here at all.

My father was pacing the veranda when I arrived at Istana. "Thank God you're all right," he said. "I tried to telephone you but the line was dead."

"The streets of the town are no longer safe." I described to him the aerial battle I had seen and he shook his head in despair.

"Isabel managed to ring me," he said. "The Hill Station's been bombed."

"That doesn't make sense. The Japanese have a radio station up there."

"How did you know they have a radio station on The Hill?" he asked, his voice sharp.

"I saw it," I said.

"Then they must have been aiming for Bel Retiro," he said, referring to the resident councillor's official residence on The Hill.

"Have the rest of the servants gone home?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"I think they'd be safer here, for now. They can join their families once the air raids have stopped," I said.

He agreed, but when he asked only a handful elected to stay. A few, whom I had known since I was a child, now looked at me with suspicion when I wished them well. My father noticed and said to me when they were gone, "They think you've been helping the Japanese."

"Do you think so too?" I asked.

He kept silent for a while. Then he said, "Yes. Maybe Mr. Endo wanted some information from someone who was familiar with Penang and Malaya. And you provided it."

I dropped into a chair and placed my hands over my face. I supposed this was a good time to let him know. "I'll be working for the Japanese government the day they take over," I said, the words tumbling out despite my resolve to speak slowly, calmly.

My father dipped his head and closed his eyes. His shoulders seemed to collapse in defeat, his disappointment in me twisting like a keris in my heart, severing all my breath and flow of blood. He had remained strong all this time and now I saw I had managed what the Japanese had failed to do-I had punctured his spirit, opening a tear that would make him vulnerable.

"Then that is what Mr. Endo has taught you to be. That is what he made of you. So you have betrayed all of us, all the people of Penang," he said. And then he left me and I sat there alone to consider what I had done.

Chapter Four.

The Japanese troops met with no resistance when they entered the streets of Georgetown. The British soldiers had already evacuated and in their haste had left the airfields and oil supplies intact, like thoughtful gifts for the new owner of a home.

We had been taking turns at night to keep watch over the house. The electricity supply had been cut off all across the island; my father was certain that the looting would be restricted to the shops in town, but we all felt safer keeping watch.

When morning broke I dressed in formal clothes. The smell of dew on the lawns and on the leaves of the trees and the silence on the roads cleared my mind as I cycled into Georgetown.

The streets were quiet; there were no sounds of hawkers firing up their stoves, no rattle of metal shutters as shops were opened. Even the pariah dogs that roamed the streets seemed cowed. The harbor was silent, lacking the daily shouts of coolies and the noise of sea traffic. Those who were brave or foolish enough came out to watch; I joined a group of people by the roadside.

We heard the faint sound of marching feet. As it grew louder the first lines of Japanese soldiers came out from the road leading to the harbor. A cheer erupted from some of those around me, those who believed the country to be finally freed from colonial authority. The Japanese had, after all, promised to return the country to Malay rule. There was a sudden raising of homemade Japanese flags, many with the central circle of red crudely drawn, thrust up like flowers forced into sudden bloom.

After hearing about them for so long, I finally saw them and, like many others, I thought it inconceivable that this group of ill-dressed, uncouth-looking soldiers had defeated the British.

They came in their baggy trousers, high rubber boots, and loose, mud-stained shirts, their heads covered by cloth caps with dirty neck-flaps, their swords hanging limply, knocking against their dented water canteens. They were only permitted to drink once a day while marching and their clothes were practical for the jungle terrain through which they had to travel.

Endo-san had requested that I be present for the formal surrender of the island at the resident councillor's official home. I left the crowd and made my way to the road leading to the main entrance, as the soldiers marched past the angsana-shaded drive that passed through the gardens where the resident councillor's wife used to give tea parties in support of her favorite charities. In my mind I could hear teaspoons knocking against delicate china, voices rising and swooping, and merry laughter matching the cadences of the water that sprang from the fountain. Now, only the crackle of the leaves in the wind remained from those times.

I took my place next to Endo-san in the garden outside the main doors of the Residence. It was already a beautiful day and the light of the early morning picked up the beads of water on the lawn, letting them sparkle for a brief moment before burning them into steam.

Only a few members of the resident councillor's staff had remained. His family had left Penang with the first wave of evacuees.

"Your father would be ashamed of you," he said when he saw me take my place next to the Japanese.

"He's as ashamed of me as he is of the cowardice of the British army, leaving the island completely vulnerable," I said.

The soldiers halted before Hiroshi and their commanding officer bowed to him. Hiroshi turned to face us and read from a document from General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who was running the war in Asia.

I interpreted the entire proceedings, ignoring the angered looks from the resident councillor and his remaining staff. That was the day I became known as a "running dog," the term used by the locals to refer to a collaborator. There was actually no need for my presence, since Hiroshi, Endo-san, and the military commander all spoke English well; it was a clever move by the Japanese to present me to the English. A military photographer had us pose and took our picture for the newspapers.

We stood on the lawn as the Union Flag and the Straits Settlements' dark blue flag were taken down without ceremony. The flag of Japan, a drop of blood on a sheet of pure white, floated gently up to the sky as the military band played the Kimigayo. I did not sing, although Endo-san had long ago taught me the words. And then I watched without expression as the resident councillor and his people were led off to a prisoner-of-war camp. I never found out what happened to them.

There were immediate reprisals by the Japanese against the looters who had scoured Georgetown. They were identified by informants, then arrested and beheaded. Their severed heads were stuck on poles lining the streets. Quite a few had been innocent, singled out by people who held a grudge against them. Our cook, Ah Jin, who had remained with us, came back from the market and I heard her voice frightening the others in the kitchen.

"The Jipunakui caught two young men stealing from a motorcycle shop and cut off their heads in the public square at the police headquarters. You can see them. Their heads are still on those long poles." There were moans of horror and Ah Jin continued, "Aiyo, the blood, like pigs being slaughtered in the Pulau Tikus market-lah! I tell you, these Jipunakui are animals!" She saw me listening by the door and hurriedly took her basket and went out to the yard.

A curfew was imposed and those caught breaking it were shot on sight. Food and supplies were rationed and the firms and trading companies were taken over by the military, although a few-Hutton & Sons among them-were still allowed to be run by their owners. The goods would be shipped to Japan to help with their war effort, much to my father's fury.

We heard nothing from Edward or MacAllister. "I hope they're all right," my father said on our way to a meeting called by Endo-san. The Penang business owners and managers who had not escaped to Singapore had been asked to attend. "You realize you're now working for the second most powerful man in Penang? And probably one of the five most powerful men in Malaya?" he asked. "I suppose I can't hire you back again at your former salary?"

I tried to appreciate his feeble attempt at humor and smiled, hoping he had come to see the sense of my decision.

"I'm sorry. I should have discussed it with you first," I said.

"It's already done. You would've gone and worked for them anyway," he said, and the brief moment of humor and warmth we had tried to achieve was gone, washed away by the bitterness in his voice.

We were shown into the meeting room once used by the resident councillor to run the affairs of the island. Soldiers were moving furniture and boxes, as they shifted the administrative departments of the Japanese consulate to the Residence. Henry Cross, the head of Empire Trading, greeted us. Despite the circumstances he was as well dressed as ever, his height and broad shoulders making him seem the most authoritative man in the room, until Endo-san walked in.

I took my place next to him and looked around the table. There were quite a few faces I recognized, company managers, bankers, factory owners, business leaders; all had at one time or another been invited to parties at Istana and I in turn had been invited to their houses. I gave a slight nod to Towkay Yeap, steeled myself, and looked straight ahead.

"I've been appointed by the Japanese government to assist them in the transition, to interpret and to guide all of us concerning cultural matters," I began. There were the expected murmurs of outrage but I ignored them. "By my side is Mr. Hayato Endo, or as he would prefer to be called, Endo-san. He is the assistant governor. Mr. Shigeru Hiroshi, the new governor of Penang, sends his apologies but he has had to leave for Kuala Lumpur, which, as you may not be aware, has just surrendered yesterday."

There were expressions of shock on their faces and then loud murmurs of disbelief. My father looked at me, stunned and angry. I had not disclosed the news of K.L.'s surrender to him and from the look in his eyes I knew he was thinking of Edward. "You knew this and you didn't tell me? Knowing your brother's there and that I was worried to death about him?" he said.

"He was under my orders not to disclose anything," Endo-san said quietly to him. I stared at the surface of the table, unable to look at either of them.

"We are here to decide on your roles in helping the island's recovery," Endo-san now said in rapid Japanese. I translated slowly, grateful that he had redirected my father's attention. I watched the faces around me, avoiding only his. They covered their unease faultlessly, like good commercial people.

I had asked Endo-san why he required an interpreter and he said, "I wish to hear their replies twice. You would be surprised how much they will say when they think I cannot understand."

It was a convincing reply and there was truth in it. But I was starting to see that my main purpose would be to serve as an instrument of Japanese propaganda.

"General Yamashita's plan was to have members of the military take over the running of your companies and businesses completely. It is my opinion, however, that soldiers make bad businessmen. I suggested to him that we merely place advisors and allow you to assist us in running your businesses."

Henry Cross seemed to speak for them all. "That's quite unacceptable. How much power would the advisors have?"

"Complete authority. You will only remain to ensure that everything is run efficiently."

"What if we refuse?"

"Then your presence here is unnecessary and we shall make arrangements for you to be interned in a prison camp. Conditions may not be as satisfactory as those you enjoy now."

Everything went smoothly after that. "You did admirably," Endo-san said after the meeting. He appeared out of place among the heavy English furniture and I had the dislocating feeling that I was in a dream, seeing this man-the quintessence of all things Japanese-leaning back against a leather Chesterfield and fronted by a slab of oak table. "I know how hard it must be for you. At least those people saw the sense of cooperating."

I wanted to say that it was not cooperation but coercion but that would have been to state the obvious. I saw his rueful smile and so kept my silence.

"Your family will be safe," he said, rubbing his eyes.

"That's all I want."

"Everything will be made good ... in the end." His eyes now held mine captive. "I hope you do not lose your way."

The Japanese army moved south all the way to the town of Johor Bahru, where they crossed the causeway over the Straits of Johor and marched into Singapore. On February 15, 1942, the news of the official surrender came over the governor's radio and General Arthur Percival was brought before General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the military commander of Malaya.

The photograph of the surrender of Singapore, taken at the Ford factory where the signing of the agreement took place, was sent to newspapers around the world. We stood to attention as once again the Japanese anthem was played. The Japanese Occupation had begun.

"As General Yamashita promised," Hiroshi announced, his voice proud, "Singapore has been delivered as to the Divine Emperor his birthday present!"

Endo-san once described to me how the young Hirohito had spent his summers at the seaside villa owned by Endo-san's family, wading in tidal pools looking for specimens for his collection, for the future emperor was already a keen student of marine biology. I was left to wonder what sort of person the emperor had grown up to be, to want as his birthday present the subjugation of another land.

I had not heard from Aunt Mei and I became worried, wondering whether she had left her home on Bangkok Lane. The roads were busy with Japanese troops as I cycled into town and I was stopped regularly at checkpoints. My identity document issued by Endo-san prevented me from being troubled and I did not have to bow as low as the others. As I was cycling off, I heard a man being clubbed with a rifle when he forgot to bow to the soldier. I forced myself to continue, to ignore the coarse shouts of the Japanese. He'll learn, I thought. He'll learn. We all will.

I knocked on Aunt Mei's door. The windows were shut, the wooden louvers closed. It seemed so different from the old days, when the street was full of sounds and life. Even the suspicious cats were gone.

"Aunt Mei! It's me!" I shouted through the gaps of the door. I had the feeling that the street was not as empty as it seemed and I began to feel curious eyes peering from many of the houses. I knocked again.

The door opened and I was let inside. In the shadows I saw her face, damaged and discolored. I felt a jolt of anger. "The soldiers?" I asked.

She nodded, slowly, because of her bruised face. I sat her down and examined her. "Are you all right? Do you need medicine?"

"No, no. I am fine," she said, her voice squashed by her swollen features.