by Tan Twan Eng
Copyright © 2008 Tan Twan Eng
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America. For information address Weinstein Books, 22 Cortlandt Street, New York, NY 10007.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-602-86059-9
First eBook Edition: May 2008
Contents
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
BOOK TWO
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
For my parents, En vir Regter AJ Buys wat my geleer het hoe om te lewe.
“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me.
This was back in a time when I did not believe in fortunetellers, when the world was not yet filled with wonder and mystery. I cannot recall her appearance now, the woman who read my face and touched the lines on my palms. She said what she was put into this world to say, to those for whom her prophecies were meant, and then, like every one of us, she left.
I know her words had truth in them, for it always seemed to be raining in my youth. There were days of cloudless skies and unforgiving heat, but the one impression that remains now is of rain, falling from a bank of low-floating clouds, smearing the landscape into a Chinese brush painting. Sometimes it rained so often I wondered why the colors around me never faded, were never washed away, leaving the world in moldy hues.
The day I met Michiko Murakami, too, a tender rain had dampened the world. It had been falling for the past week and I knew more would come with the monsoon. Already the usual roads in Penang had begun to flood, the sea turning to a sullen gray.
On this one evening the rain had momentarily lessened to an almost undetectable mist, as though preparing for her arrival. The light was fading and the scent of wet grass wove through the air like threads entwining with the perfume of the flowers, creating an intricate tapestry of fragrance. I was out on the terrace, alone as I had been for many years, on the edge of sleep, dreaming of another life. The door chimes echoed through the house, hesitant, unfamiliar in a place they seldom entered, like a cat placing a tentative paw on a path it does not habitually walk.
I woke up; far away in time I seemed to hear another chiming, and I lay in my chair, confused. For a few moments a deep sense of loss immobilized me. Then I sat up and my glasses, which had been resting on my chest, fell to the tiles. I picked them up slowly, wiped them clean with my shirt, and found the letter which I had been reading lying under the chair. It was an invitation from the Penang Historical Society to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. I had never attended any of the society’s events but the invitations still came regularly. I folded it and got up to answer the door.
She was a patient woman, or she was very certain that I would be at home. She rang only once. I made my way through the darkened hallways and opened the heavy oak doors. I guessed her to be in her seventies, not much older than I was. She was still beautiful, her clothes simple in the way only the very expensive can be, her hair fine and soft, pulled back into a knot. She had a single small valise, and a long narrow wooden box leaned against her leg.
“Yes?” I asked.
She told me her name, with an expectation that seemed to suggest that I had been waiting for her. Yet it still took me a few seconds to find a mention of her in the vastness of my memory.
I had heard her spoken of only once before, by a wistful voice in a distant time. I tried to think of a reason to turn her away but could find none that was acceptable, for I felt that this woman had, ever since that moment, been set upon a path that would lead her to the door of my home. I took the gloved hand she offered. With its scarce flesh and thin prominent bones it felt like a bird, a sparrow with its wings wrapped around itself.
I nodded, smiled sadly, and led her through the house, pausing to put the lights on as we passed each room. The clouds had brought the night in early and the servants had already gone home. The marble floors were cold, absorbing the chill of the air but not the echo of our footsteps.
We went out to the terrace and into the garden. We passed a collection of marble statues, a few with broken limbs lying on the grass, mold eating away their luminosity like an incurable skin disease. She followed me silently, and we stopped under the casuarina tree that grew on the edge of the small cliff overlooking the sea. The tree, as old as I, gnarled and tired, gave us a small measure of shelter as the wind shook flecks of water from the leaves into our faces.
“He lies across there,” I said, pointing to the island. Though less than a mile from the shore, it appeared like a gray smudge on the sea, almost invisible through the light veil of rain. The obligation to a guest, however unsettling her presence, compelled me to ask, “You’ll stay for dinner?”
She nodded. Then, in a swift movement that belied her age, she knelt on the wet earth and brought her head to rest on the grass. I left her there, bowing to the grave of her friend. For the moment we both knew silence was sufficient. The things to be said would come later.
It felt strange to cook for two, and I had to remind myself to double the quantities of ingredients. As always—whenever I cook— I left a wake of opened spice bottles, half-cut vegetables, ladles, spoons, and various plates dripping with sauces and oil. Maria, my maid, often complains about the mess I leave. She also nags me to replace the kitchen implements, most of which are of prewar British manufacture and still going strong, if rather noisily and with great cantankerousness, like the old English mining engineers and planters who sit daily in the bar of the Penang Swimming Club, sleeping off their lunches.
I looked out to the garden through the large kitchen windows. She was standing now beneath the tree, her body unmoving as the wind shook the branches and
scattered a shower of glittering drops onto her. Her back had retained its straightness and her shoulders were level, without the disconsolate droop of age. Her skin’s suppleness fought against the lines on her face, giving her the look of a determined woman.
She was in the living room when I came through from the kitchen. The room, to which I have never made any changes, was wood-paneled, the plaster ceiling and cornices high and dark. Black marble statues of mythological Roman heroes held torches that only dimly lit up the corners of the room. The chairs were of heavy Burmese teak and covered in cracked leather, their shapes deformed by the generations that had sat on them. My great-grandfather had had them made in Mandalay when he built Istana. A Schumann baby grand piano stood in a corner. I always kept it in perfect tune, although it had not been played for many years.
She was examining a wall of photographs, perhaps hoping to find his face among them. She would be disappointed. I had never had a photograph of Endo-san; among all the photographs we took, there was never one of him, or of us together. His face was painted in my memory.
She pointed to one now. “Aikikai Hombu Dojo?”
My eyes followed her finger. “Yes,” I said.
It was a photograph of me, taken at the World Aikido Headquarters, in the Shinjukku district of Tokyo, with Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. I was dressed in a white cotton gi— a training uniform—and hakama, the traditional black trousers worn by the Japanese, staring intently at the camera’s eye, my hair still dark. Next to my five foot eleven inches, O’ Sensei, the Great Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable.
“You still teach?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore,” I replied in Japanese.
She named some of the people she knew, all high-ranking masters. I nodded in recognition at each name and for a while we talked of them. Some had died; some, like me, had retired. Yet others, though in their late eighties, continued to train faithfully as they had for almost all of their lives.
She pointed to another photograph. “That must be your father,” she said. “You have his face.”
The monochrome photograph of my family had been taken by our driver just before the war. We were all standing in front of the portico and the light of the sun and the sea made my father’s blue eyes paler, his teeth brighter. His carefully combed white hair seemed like part of the glare of the cloudless sky.
“He was very good-looking,” she said.
We were standing around him: Edward, William, and Isabel from his first marriage, and I from his last, each of us carrying his face in one feature or another. There was a timeless quality to our smiles, as though we would always be together, laughing, loving life. I remember the day still, from across the distance of the fleeting years. It was one of the rare moments when I had felt I was part of my family.
“Your sister?” she asked, moving to another photograph. I nodded and looked at Isabel on the balcony outside her room, her rifle in her hand, cheeks sucked in with determination as the lights from below seemed to lift her up. I could almost feel the soft wind that ruffled her skirts.
“Taken at the last party we ever had,” I said. “Before the war wrecked everything.”
The rain had stopped, and I suggested to Michiko that we have our meal out on the terrace. She insisted on helping me lay the table, and I rolled back the canopy to open the sky to us. We sat beneath a patch of stars, flickering seeds in a furrow in the clouds.
She had a hearty appetite, despite the simplicity of the meal I had made. She was also entertaining; it was almost as though we had known each other all our lives. She took a sip of the tea I had served, looked surprised, and lifted the cup to her nose. I watched her carefully, wondering if she would pass my test.
“Fragrance of the Lonely Tree,” she said, correctly identifying the brew which I had specially imported from Japan. “Harvested from tea plantations near my home. One could not obtain it after the war as the terraced fields had been destroyed.”
At the end of the meal she held up her wineglass and made a graceful gesture to the island. “To Endo-san,” she said softly.
I nodded. “To Endo-san.”
“Listen,” she said. “Do you hear him?”
I closed my eyes and, yes, I heard him. I heard him breathe. I smiled wanly. “He’s always here, Michiko. That’s why, wherever I go, I always yearn to return.”
She took my hand in hers and again I felt its birdlike fragility. When she spoke her voice was full of sorrow. “My poor friend. How you have suffered.”
I pulled my hand away carefully. “We have all suffered, Michiko. Endo-san most of all.”
We sat without speaking. The sea sighed each time a wave collapsed on the shore like a long-distance runner at the finishing line. I have always felt a greater affinity with the sea at night. It is magnificent during the day, the waves strong and loud, slamming onto the beach, propelled by the force of the entire ocean behind it. But when night comes that force is spent, and the waves roll to the shore with the detachment of a monk unfurling a scroll.
Then, softly, she began to tell me about her life. She spoke in a rapid, natural mixture of Japanese and English, the two interlacing like colored threads, spinning her tale.
“I am a widow new to my white robes. My husband, Murakami Ozawa, departed earlier this year.”
“My condolences,” I said, unsure where she was leading me.
“I had been married to Ozawa for fifty-five years. He owned an electronics company, a well-known one. His death made my world, my whole life, suddenly senseless. I was set adrift, and I closed myself up in my home in Tokyo, shutting out the world. I spent my days in the spacious gardens, walking barefoot across the pebble fields, spoiling the neat circles created by Seki, our gardener. He never complained, but only created the patterns again, day after day,” she said, a lost look in her eyes.
She could find no strength to pull herself out of her grief, she told me. Outside, the company’s board was frantic, for she had been bequeathed the controlling shares by her husband. She shut them all out and took no calls. The servants stirred the silences of her home with fearful whispers.
But the world intruded. “I received a letter from Endo-san,” she said, and her movement of looking away from me, as though she had been distracted by the glimmer of dew in the grass, was so unforced that anyone else would have thought it natural.
I was grateful for her kindness, although I managed to absorb her news with greater equanimity than she had given me credit for. “When did he send it?” I asked.
“Over fifty years ago, in the spring of 1945,” she said, giving me a smile. “It came out of the past like a ghost. Can you imagine its journey? He had written about his life here, and he had written about you.”
I let her fill our glasses. I had visited Japan often enough to know she would feel insulted if I had poured.
“I will tell you how we met,” she said after a while, as though she had been mulling over the decision for some time.
“Endo-san worked for his father, who owned a successful trading business. In fact, he was already running the business, traveling around China and to Hong Kong. He spent his evenings teaching in the aikijutsu school in our village. As the daughter of a samurai I was expected to be proficient with the sword, and in unarmed combat—bujutsu—above all other arts. Unlike my sisters I enjoyed bujutsu more than my music and flower-arranging lessons.
“At that time aikijutsu was just a fledgling art; it had not evolved into the aikido of today. My father was not impressed with it, but when I saw the class, and the movements, I knew I had found something precious. I think you know what I felt: it was as though my heart, long held in darkness, had turned to catch a glimpse of the warmth and light of the sun.”
She laughed softly. “I soon began to treasure the time I spent with Endo-san. My school friends teased me terribly about my feelings for him. But still I dreamed and dreamed, and wrapped myself in clouds of make-believ
e.
“As the eldest son he was expected to take over the company from his father one day. He was very often away from the country. On his return he brought me gifts, from China, Siam, the islands of the Philippines, and once even a woven headscarf from the mountains of northern India.
“We began to see each other regularly. We would walk along the beach, gazing out to the Miyajima Torii Shrine, and I often met him for tea in the pavilion in the park, feeding the ducks and the obedient lines of ducklings in the lake. I think those were the happiest days I can remember.
“My initial infatuation matured into something deeper and more permanent. My father, who was a magistrate, did not approve of our friendship. Endo-san was of course very much older than me, and his family, although originally of the samurai class, had been relegated to the status of merchants, a very low position on our social order, as you may know. His father had decided to turn the family’s various farms and properties into commercial concerns. They were wealthy, but not acceptable to the aristocracy.”
I leaned forward, not wishing to miss anything. Endo-san had given me only a cursory description of his childhood and he had never fully revealed his background. During the years when I lived in Japan I had tried to conduct my own inquiries, but without much success, as the documentary records had all been destroyed. But now, hearing it from her, from one who had been there, my curiosity was stirred once again.
She saw my interest and continued.
“The fact that Endo-san’s father was a disgraced court official was very much talked about in our village. But that did not bother me at all. In fact, my feelings for him were strengthened and I often said very rude things to his family’s detractors.
“My father felt that I was spending too much time with Endo-san, and I was forbidden to see him.” She shook her head. “What obedient children we were. There was no question of ignoring my father’s commands. I cried every night, for it was a terrible time for me.
“It was also a terrible time for Japan. To survive, we had become a military nation; you are a scholar of Japan, so you know what it was like. Oh, the endless chanting and shouting of war slogans, the violent clashes between the militarists and the pacifists in the streets, the frightening marches and demonstrations—I hated all of them. Even in my deepest dreams I heard them.