by Tan Twan Eng
I want to remember it all, I told Endo-san once. I want to remember everything that I have touched and seen and felt, so that it will never be lost and brushed away. He had laughed, but he had understood.
My mother, Khoo Yu Lian, was my father’s second wife. She was Chinese and her father had joined the mass exodus to Malaya from the Hokkien province in China in search of wealth and a chance to survive. Thousands of Chinese came to work in the tin mines, escaping famine, drought, and political upheaval. Her father had managed to become wealthy from his mines in Ipoh, a town two hundred miles away to the south. He had sent his youngest daughter to the Convent School in Light Street in Penang, far away from the coarse coolies he employed.
My father had been a widower when he met my mother. His wife Emma had died giving birth to Isabel, his third child, and I suppose he was also looking for a surrogate mother for his three young children. Yu Lian met my father at a party held by the son of the Chinese consul general, Cheong Fatt Tze, a Mandarin sent from Peking. She was seventeen, and he was thirty-two.
My father scandalized Penang society when he married my mother, but his wealth and influence partly eased the way. She died when I was seven and, except for a few photographs in the house, I have only faint memories of her. I have tried to hold on to those fading recollections, those softening voices and disappearing scents, augmenting them with what I heard from my two brothers and sister and the servants who had known her.
The four of us Hutton children grew up virtually as orphans: after my mother’s death my father retreated into his work. He went on frequent trips to the other states to visit his tin mines, his plantations, and his friends. He took the train down the coast to Kuala Lumpur regularly, spending days there while he oversaw the office just behind the court buildings. His only consolation in life, it seemed, was the company, but my brother Edward once told us that he kept a mistress there. At that young age I had no idea what he was talking about, though William and Isabel had giggled. For days afterward I pestered them about it and eventually our amah heard me mentioning the word, and warned me, “Aiyah! Stop saying that terrible word or I’ll beat your backside!”
Our father had instructed that we were to be addressed in the dialect of Hokkien by the Chinese servants, and Malay by the Malay gardener. Like many of the Europeans who considered Malaya their home, he had also insisted that all his children receive their education locally as much as possible. We grew up speaking the local languages, as he had himself. It would bind us to Penang forever.
I was not close to my siblings before I met Endo-san, being very much the solitary type. I was not interested in the things that fascinated my schoolmates: sports and spider hunting and fighting crickets for money. And because of my mixed parentage I was never completely accepted by either the Chinese or the English of Penang, each race believing itself to be superior. It had always been so. When I was younger I had tried to explain this to my father, when the boys at school had taunted me. But he had dismissed my words, and said I was being silly and too sensitive. I knew then that I had no choice but to harden myself against the insults and whispered comments, and to find my own place in the scheme of life.
After school I would throw my bag in my room and head for the beach below Istana, climbing down the wooden steps built into the cliff. I spent my afternoons swimming in the sea and reading under the shade of the bowed, rustling coconut trees. I read everything that my father had in his library, even when I did not understand it. When my attention left the pages I would put the book down and catch crabs and dig for clams and crayfish hidden in the sea. The water was warm and clear and the tidal pools were filled with fish and strange marine life. I had a little boat of my own and I was a good sailor.
My brothers and sister were so much older than I that I spent very little time with them. Isabel, who was five when I was born, was closest to me in age, while my brothers William and Edward were older than I by seven and ten years, respectively. William sometimes tried to include me in whatever he was doing but I always thought he did it as a polite afterthought and, as I grew older, I would make excuses not to join him.
Yet, despite my preference for being on my own, there were occasions when I enjoyed my siblings’ company. William, who was always trying to impress some girl or other, would organize tennis parties and weekend retreats up into the cooler climate of Penang Hill where, in the olden days before I was born, before the existence of the funicular tram, travelers were borne up in sedan chairs on the shoulders of sweating Chinese coolies. We had a house up on The Hill, which clung on the edge of a sharp drop. It was cold at night up there, a welcome change from the heat of the lowlands, and the lights of Georgetown lay spread out beneath, dimming the stars. Once, Isabel and I became lost in the jungle that covered The Hill after running off the track in search of orchids. She never cried at all and even gave me courage, though I knew she was just as scared as I was. We walked for hours in that green and lush world, until she got us back onto the track again. There were also rounds of parties at Istana where my father entertained, and we were often invited to other parties and receptions, dragon-boat races at the Esplanade, cricket matches, horse races, and any occasion that could justify, even slightly, a reason to dance and drink and laugh. Although I was by necessity included in these invitations, I often felt they were due to the influence my father held more than anything else.
There was a small island owned by my family about a mile out, thick with trees. It was accessible only from the beach that faced out to the open sea. I spent a lot of my afternoons there imagining I was a castaway, alone in the world. I even used to spend nights on it during those periods when my father was away in Kuala Lumpur.
Early in 1939, when I was sixteen, my father leased out the little island and warned us not to set foot on it as it was now occupied. It frustrated me that my personal retreat had been taken from me and for the next few weeks I spied out the activities that went on there. Judging from the supplies being ferried across by workmen in little boats, a small structure was being built. I contemplated sneaking onto the island but my father’s caution deterred me. So I gave up on it, and tried not to think anymore about it.
And halfway across the world, countries that seemed to have little to do with us were preparing to go to war.
“May I speak to the master of the house?”
I gave a small start. It was an early dusk in the second week of April and a slight rain was falling, soft as the seeds blown off wild grass by the wind, a deceptively gentle warning of the monsoon season soon to come. The lawns glistened and the casuarina’s scent added richness to the smell of the rain. I sat on the terrace beneath an umbrella where I had been reading and staring at the sky, lost in my dreams, looking at the heavy clouds resting on the unbendable horizon. The words, although spoken softly, had jolted me from my thoughts.
I turned and faced him. He was in his late forties, medium built and stocky. His hair was almost silver, cut very short and shining like the wet grass. The face was square and lined, his eyes round and glinting strangely in the twilight. His features were too sharp for a Chinese, and his accent was unknown to me.
“I’m the master’s son. What is it about?” I asked, suddenly aware that I was quite alone. The servants were in their quarters behind the house, preparing their evening meals. I made a note to speak to them about allowing a stranger to enter the house without any form of announcement.
“I would like to borrow a boat from you,” he answered.
“Who are you?” I asked. Being a Hutton, I often got away with rudeness.
“Hayato Endo. I live there.” He pointed to the island, my island.
So that was how he had managed to enter the house. He had come up from the beach.
“My father’s not here,” I said. The rest of the family was away in London, where they were to join my brother William, who had completed his university studies the year before but had decided to stay on in London with his friends instead of coming home to
work. Every five years my father would reluctantly place his manager in charge of the firm and take his children to their homeland for a long visit, a practice many of the English in the colonies viewed as being almost as sacred as a religious pilgrimage. I had elected not to go this time. My father had been annoyed, for he had planned the journey to coincide with the start of my school holidays, and had in fact spoken to the headmaster of my school to allow me to miss the first month of the new term. But I suspected my siblings were relieved: I often felt that explaining a half-Chinese relation to their English friends and distant relations was not attractive to them at all.
“Nevertheless, I require a boat from you,” the strange man insisted. “Mine, I am afraid, has been washed away by the tide.” He smiled. “It is probably halfway to India by now.”
I got up from the wicker chair and asked him to accompany me to our boathouse. But he stood, unmoving, staring out to the sea and the overcast sky. “The sea can break one’s heart, neh?”
This was the first time I heard someone describe what I felt. I stopped, uncertain what to say. Just a few simple words had encapsulated my feelings for the sea. It was heartbreakingly beautiful. We stood silently for a few minutes, joined by a common love. There was no movement except for the rain and the waves. Veins of lightning flared and throbbed behind the wall of clouds, turning the bruised sky pink, and I felt I was being granted glimpses of blood pulsing silently through the ventricles of an immense human heart.
“The sea is the only thing that joins me to my home now,” he said, and then looked surprised at having uttered those words.
We walked out into the rain, the grass spongy beneath my bare feet. The boathouse was on the beach, and we climbed down the long flight of wet steps. Once I slipped, and the man’s hand shot out and gripped me tightly. I felt the strength of his arm and stopped struggling for balance. I looked at him and said, “I walk these steps every day. I wasn’t going to fall.”
He appeared amused at my annoyance. I felt the burn where his fingers had clamped onto me and I resisted the urge to rub it. I wondered why he had leased the island.
And then we were on the sand. There was only the roar of the sea and the wind. No other sound existed. Even the birds were gone from the sky. The wind was now stirring up the sea, streaking it white and whipping the unending rain into our faces and hair. At this moment, it was good to be alive.
We hauled out my boat and dragged it down the bay to a spot where it would be easier for him to row across the choppy water. We set it down at the waterline, where the backwash of the waves tugged at it insistently. From this part of the beach I could see only the edge of Istana, like the prow of a great ship rounding a point.
“Thank you for lending me the boat,” he said, giving me a slight bow, which I immediately returned without thinking. He looked back to the island and then turned to me. “Come with me. Let me repay your kindness by offering you a meal.”
He intrigued me, so I stepped into the boat.
He rowed smoothly, the prow slicing through the rough waves. He headed for the beach facing out to the sea, skillfully avoiding the rocks. Once we neared the island he stopped rowing and let the waves lift us and rush us in. We hit the shore with a shudder.
I stepped out into the water and helped him pull the boat onto the beach. The place did not seem to have changed. I looked around and found the tree where I had so often fallen asleep in the hot afternoons and the rock where I dried my clothes. I touched it as I went by.
We left the beach and walked through a clump of trees until we came to a small clearing. I stopped, taking in the one-storey wooden house with a shaded verandah running around it. “You built this?”
He nodded. “I designed it in the traditional Japanese style. Your father provided me with the workmen.”
The lines of the house were clean and simple, blending in beautifully with the surrounding trees. I felt sadness and resentment that the island was now changed by its presence. It was almost as if a large part of my childhood had disappeared without my knowledge, without giving me the time to bid farewell to it.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” I answered and, after a moment, added, “Your home is beautiful.” As I said those words I felt my earlier sadness lifting. If things have to change, if time has to pass, then I was glad he had built this house here.
He went in and lit the lamps, and the sliding doors with their rice paper screens gave off a welcoming glow.
I followed him inside, leaving my shoes outside as he had done. He gave me a towel to dry myself. There was no furniture, only rectangular padded mats around a hearth set into the floor. He lit a brazier, placed a pot over it, and threw in vegetables and prawns. Outside the rain was getting heavier, but I felt warm and protected within the house.
The stew began to boil and steam rose up into the small chimney over the hearth. The smell of it sharpened my hunger. He stirred the pot and, with a wooden ladle, filled two ceramic bowls, handing one to me.
He watched me as I ate. “How old are you?” he asked. I told him.
“And you have not let me know your name,” he said.
“Philip,” I said.
His eyes looked inward, then stared back into mine. “You are the one who was here before me.”
I asked him how he knew.
“You carved your name into one of the rocks here.”
“I used to come here every day after school.”
He studied me carefully, and from the note in his voice I knew he somehow understood my sense of loss. “You are still welcome to do that.”
I was gratified by the invitation. I looked around as we ate. The room was not as bare as I had first thought. A few photographs hung on one wall. There were also two white scrolls that stretched from the ceiling almost to the floor. I could not decipher the writing on them, although I felt strangely soothed by its fluid curves. It was like looking at a flowing river as it twisted and turned on its way to the sea. On the floor between the scrolls a sword rested on a lacquered stand, and there was not a doubt in my mind that he knew how to use it.
A branch hit the side of the house, scraping the roof with its leaves. The rain fell with greater intensity, and from past experience I knew the sea would be choppy and treacherous for my little boat.
“Your family will be worried,” he remarked as we went out and sat on the verandah. He unrolled the bamboo blinds to leave the wind and the rain outside like disfavored courtiers. I sipped the hot green tea he had prepared. I took another swallow, liking the taste of it. I had followed his way of sitting, knees folded, feet tucked under the buttocks. My ankles began to burn with pain but I refused to stretch my legs. Even then, at that stage, I wanted to show him I could endure.
I distanced myself from the pain by listening to the layers of sound: through the clatter of rain hitting the roof I could hear the sea, water dripping off leaves, the chink of china as we lifted our cups and placed them down again.
“There’s no one to worry,” I answered. “My family is in London.”
“And yet you are here.”
I smiled, without much humor. “I’m the outcast. The half-Chinese child of my father. No, that’s unfair,” I said, trying to clarify my reasons for not following my family without sounding resentful. How to explain to this stranger the sense of not being connected to anything? It struck me at that moment that, while other children became orphans when their parents died, my future as an orphan had been cast the night my parents met and fell in love. Finally I said, “I just don’t like London, that’s all. I was there five years ago. It was too cold for me. Have you been there?”
He shook his head. “A dangerous time to be in London.”
“People say all those warnings of war are just talk.”
“I do not agree. War will break out.”
The certainty in his words and a verdict so different from that I had been hearing raised my interest. He was obviously not from these parts. I wond
ered again who he was and what he was doing in Penang.
I could see one of the calligraphy scrolls through the door. “Where is your home?” I asked.
“A village in Japan,” he said, and I heard the longing in his voice. I thought back to his words earlier in the evening when he said the sea was the only thing that linked him to his home and, although I had only just met him, I felt an inexplicable sadness for him, as though in some mysterious way the sadness was mine too.
A streak of lightning slashed across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. I flinched.
“You should stay here tonight,” he said, rising in one fluid motion. I followed him inside, glad to be away from the spectacle of the storm. He went into his room and came out with a rolled-up mattress, placing it near the hearth.
He bowed to me and I was compelled to return it. “Oyasumi nasai,” he said.
I presumed it meant “good night,” for the next moment he had blown out the candles and left me in the darkened room that was lit intermittently by the play of lightning. I unrolled my mattress by the hearth and eventually went to sleep.
I was awakened by a series of short, abrupt screams. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was. I rose from the mattress and slid open the latticed door. The sun was just hauling itself up from the other side of the world. The sky was still covered with clouds pared thin by the winds and there was a palpable sense of freshness in the air; even the waves hitting the shore sounded crisp and clean.
He was in a clearing beneath the trees, his hands gripping the sword I had noticed the night before. It rose up in an arc described by his hands and descended swiftly, soundlessly, followed by his sharp cry. He was clothed in white robes and a pair of black trousers that looked more like a skirt. He looked very alien and very impressive.
He took no notice of me although I knew he was aware of my scrutiny. The air seemed to vibrate as he slashed, stabbed, sliced, and whirled around the clearing. He had placed a circle of thick bamboo trunks around him and now, in one single motion, the sword cut and the sticks of bamboo fell one after the other. The blade was so sharp there was not even the sound of a crack as it sliced them.