by Tan Twan Eng
“How can I not look at them?”
“You must get rid of your fear. Your eyes dart from my hands to my legs because you are afraid, unsure of yourself. Let go of your worry about getting hit and it will not happen.”
I shook my head to clear the fog and to understand what he said.
“Get up. We shall do it again.”
I sighed, stood up and went into a fighting stance again.
By the time the lesson ended the storm clouds had come in low, scraping the tops of the range of hills like a dragon’s underbelly moving over rocks. We stood by the wall to watch them.
“I always like your clouds here,” Endo-san said. “They fly so low.”
“On days like these, when the clouds are thick, heaven seems closer, and I almost feel I can touch it.”
He looked at me, hearing the wistful tone of my words. “You can touch heaven any time you wish. Let me show you.”
He called it tenchi-nage, the heaven-earth throw. He gripped both my arms forcefully and asked me to separate them, to raise one arm into the sky, as though to reach into the heart of heaven itself. I lowered my other hand as if to connect with the center of the earth. I felt the weakening of his attack immediately. His strength was divided, torn between the earth and the sky. I entered into his sphere of balance and threw him off his feet easily.
“Now you will always remember me as the man who taught you to touch heaven,” he said.
He was looking for a house for the consulate, for the staff to use on their leave. I brought him to a mock-Tudor house that had been built on the northern face of the hill. It had an all-round view from the Indian Ocean to the misty distances of the Malay Peninsula. “It’s always been let out to holiday-makers,” I said. “The owner’s an American silk merchant from Bangkok.”
He studied it and took a few photographs. “We shall see if it suits the consul’s preferences. But I am certain Hiroshi-san will not find fault with it. Does it have a telephone?”
“Yes. It’s one of the few houses up here that has a telephone line.”
He folded his tripod and packed his camera, and we started walking back to Istana Kechil. The path wound past the gates and entrances to other homes, all owned by the British. We were at the very top, for even here a hierarchical system was imposed—the local Chinese and Malay people could only own properties on the lower levels, all looking up to the big ang-moh lau—Mansions of the Red Hair. A question occurred to me as we walked.
“Why does Japan have a consular office in Penang?” I asked.
“It has a few such offices in Malaya. There is one in Kuala Lumpur and one in Singapore. We have some trade with this part of the world. As I have told you, after so many centuries of seclusion, Japan now wants to a play a part in the destiny of the world.”
On the way down in the funicular, which moved so silently I felt we were on a leaf floating down the hill, he asked, “Have you been to Kuala Lumpur?”
“I have. Now and then my father takes us there for a weekend. We have an office there. Most of the trading companies made Kuala Lumpur their headquarters, but he refused to move ours there.”
“Well, I agree with him. Your island is much nicer than Kuala Lumpur. I intend to make a short visit there in a few days’ time. Again, I need someone familiar with it. Would you like to join me?”
I did not hesitate at all. “I’d like that very much,” I replied.
Chapter Six
Uncle Lim, our family chauffeur, came out from the garage when I returned. He looked at me, narrowing his already small eyes. “You’ve been spending time with that Japanese devil. Better not let your father know.”
We spoke in Hokkien, the dialect brought over from the Hokkien province of southern China. The majority of the Chinese immigrants in Penang had been born there before sailing to Malaya in search of work.
“Yes, Uncle Lim,” I replied—we always addressed our older servants in respectful terms. “But he’ll only find out if you tell.”
“I need to send the car to the workshop. I don’t know how long the repairs will take. I won’t be able to drive you around for some time.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to Kuala Lumpur with Endo-san next week.”
“That man cannot be trusted,” he said.
“You dislike all Japanese, Uncle Lim.”
“I have good reason to. Day-by-day they’re advancing deeper into China. Now they’ve started bombing the towns.” He shook his head. “I’ve asked my daughter to join me here. She should be arriving in Penang in a month’s time.”
I heard the anger in his voice, and stopped needling him. Uncle Lim had two wives, who had both left the Hokkien province to work in the silk factories owned by the British in Canton. Every two years he would request leave to return home. That was the one day when my father would drive him to the pier and help him load the bags and presents onto the liner. Despite my father’s offer to pay for a cabin, Uncle Lim invariably booked a berth deep inside the ship. “The money can be used for better things,” he would say, showing the thriftiness that the Hokkien people prided themselves in but which I often considered to border on miserliness.
“Is your family safe?” I found it hard to accept that Endo-san’s people were capable of carrying out such attacks, but from the look on Uncle Lim’s face I realized I was wrong.
He nodded, but said, “They’re running, leaving for the south. I told them to come here, but they refused. I couldn’t order them— that’s the problem when women start working in factories, eh? But at least my daughter still listens to me.”
“I’ll ask one of the girls to prepare a room for her here,” I said, knowing my father would have said the same. I wanted to say something more, but at that moment I felt as though I was being spun around in one of Endo-san’s aikijutsu movements, not knowing where I stood. I could not abandon what I had begun with Endo-san, for my classes with him had become a way of life for me and the knowledge he was imparting to me was too precious to be surrendered. Endo-san was not responsible for what was happening in a land far away, I told myself. So I kept silent and thought that the offer of a room for Uncle Lim’s daughter would be sufficient on my part.
Uncle Lim shook his head. “She’ll stay with my cousin in Balik Pulau. They’ll have a place for her.”
I looked at him as he walked away. I knew he was only in his early fifties but I now saw that he was growing old. The other servants were afraid of his temper, but he had never shown it to any of us. My amah told me that when my mother first entered Istana as its new mistress she had often wandered into the kitchen, much to the disapproval of the servants there. It was their domain, and she had interrupted their way of running the place. What was more, she was a Chinese woman who had married a European. There had been much unhappiness until Uncle Lim requested my mother to leave the servants alone and stay out of the kitchen. Only he had been brave enough to do so.
Uncle Lim stopped and turned around. “Your eldest aunt rang today. She would like you to pay her a visit as soon as you return.”
I made a face. Ever since my mother’s death, Aunt Yu Mei had thought she had a duty to watch over me.
“What does she want?” I asked.
“It’s almost the end of Cheng Beng, have you forgotten?” he chided me, referring to the Clear and Brilliant Festival, when families gather to tidy the graves of their parents and ancestors, and place offerings of food and paper money. “I haven’t forgotten,” I said, although I had.
It was only just starting to occur to me what a strange place I had grown up in—a Malayan country ruled by the British, with strong Chinese, Indian, and Siamese influences. Within the island I could move from world to world merely by crossing a street. From Bangkok Lane I could walk to Burmah Road and Moulmein Road, down Armenian Street, then to the Indian areas of Chowrasta Market; from there I could enter the Malay quarters around Kapitan Kling Mosque, then to the Chinese sections of Kimberley Road, Chulia Lane, and Campbell
Street. One could easily lose one’s identity and acquire another just by going for a stroll.
Uncle Lim drove me to Aunt Yu Mei’s home before taking the car to the workshop. I watched as he backed into the short driveway and drove off. He had been worried about his daughter and I felt sorry for him, but I knew his dislike of Endo-san, just because he was a Japanese, was wrong. If not, then he should have had nothing to do with my father either, for even I knew of the suffering the British trading houses had caused in China.
Aunt Yu Mei lived in Bangkok Lane, behind the Siamese Wat Chaiya Mangkalaram Temple, where my mother’s ashes were kept. Bangkok Lane had two rows of townhouses, the shaded porches reaching almost to the road’s edge. Many of the houses’ wooden blinds were rolled up, looking like huge sausage rolls hanging beneath the eaves. The houses were all built close together and groups of children played in the road. Cats sunned themselves on the balustrades, twisting their tails and licking their paws. They stopped when I neared them and eyed me with suspicion.
I rang the bell and called out through the wooden shutters, “Aunt Mei!” I heard her on her wooden clogs as she came to the door. It opened and she led me inside. In the front hall, the smell of incense came from an altar on which a bronze figurine of the Buddha sat looking down, eyes half closed, a single palm almost touching the ground to ask the Earth to be his witness.
Aunt Yu Mei had never told me her precise age, although I guessed she was about forty and running to that certain plumpness so common in Chinese women. She was the assistant headmistress at the Light Street Convent, the oldest girls’ school in the country. She had even, as a very young woman, taught English to my mother’s class there. Isabel, too, had been a pupil at that school and had told me that my aunt was strict, but well loved.
My aunt bore scarcely any resemblance to my mother, though she often liked to state that they were identical. Her hair was pulled tight into a shiny bun and a pair of glasses was constantly held between her fingers. As she talked, she would wave them in the air to punctuate her points. She led me to a chair, where she pushed aside a stack of examination papers she had been correcting.
“Did you do well this term?” she asked.
“Reasonably, I think. I wouldn’t know yet.”
“I hope you’ve done better than you did last term,” she said.
I made vague movements in the air with my hands, feeling uncomfortable with her questions about my academic life. I was at best an average student and she was always trying to change that.
“Did you buy the oranges like I told you to?” she asked.
I lifted the basket I had brought. She glanced at it and nodded in approval. “Your grandfather was wrong when he said you would forget your roots.”
I did not know what to reply. In truth I was only doing this to humor her. Every year, at the Festival of Cheng Beng, she would request that I pay my respects to my mother at the temple. My father never objected to her insistence that I light the joss sticks and pray to my mother. In fact, I often felt that he had a high regard for Aunt Mei. Despite her modern education, despite crossing worlds, she was still a woman of tradition—my grandfather had seen to that. Yet she was as strong-willed as he was and had been the only one from my mother’s family who had dared to attend her wedding to an ang-moh.
We walked to the temple near her house. The crowd was thin, as it was still a few days before the actual festival. We entered the grounds of the temple and walked past the stone statues of snarling, serpentine dragons and mythical birdmen, all painted in brilliant hues of turquoise, red, blue, and green.
The temple was constructed in 1845 by the Siamese community on an extensive piece of property granted by Queen Victoria. Built in the traditions of Siamese architecture, it was trimmed generously in gold and maroon. Stone reliefs of the Buddha decorated the walls in a repeating motif. We walked past two guardian dragons on long concrete plinths, their bodies curling like waves, and left our shoes by the entrance, where a sign in English warned: “Beware of Shoe Thiefs!” Aunt Yu Mei was disgusted at the misspelling.
We entered the temple, our feet bare on the cold marble floors which were patterned with pink lotus flowers. It was like stepping on an infinite series of blossoms. Aunt Yu Mei put her hands together and prayed before the figure of the reclining Buddha inside. The statue was over a hundred feet long from the top of his head, past his flowing robes, to his bare feet and shiny nails. The Buddha lay resting on his side, one hand supporting his head, the other following the curve of his body, his eyes half asleep and half awake, completely aware. It was the same look Endo-san had whenever he was meditating. Small gold reliefs of the Buddha, replicated on the walls, reached up to the roof of the temple. An artisan high up on bamboo scaffolding was patiently outlining them in red paint with a dainty calligraphy brush.
I thought again of the day I had visited the snake temple with Endo-san. How strange religion is. I was used to the austerity of the Anglican Church, and to me temples and their rituals—thick with incense smoke and smells and bright with color, and with their enigmatic words and vague pronouncements—belonged to a disquieting, unfamiliar world.
Aunt Yu Mei nudged me to pray to the reclining Buddha, so I clasped my palms together and tried to appear prayerful. I followed her around the Buddha’s couch to the columbarium behind and started searching for my mother’s urn. The whole wall looked like a massive honeycomb, every hole housing a porcelain urn. I identified my mother’s by her photograph, and placed the oranges on the low table beneath it. Aunt Yu Mei lit the joss sticks and the red candles and placed them in a vase. She closed her eyes and her lips started moving rapidly. Up near the ceiling, a pair of swallows chased each other around the head of the Buddha, their breathless cries loud and resonant. The giant reclining Buddha did not flicker an eyelid.
I held the joss sticks in my hands and tried to picture my mother, tried to gather my scattered memories of her. Pieces of them floated by, fraying and tattered. Every year it became harder and harder. It was like trying to recapture in a bottle the perfume with which the ancient Greeks drenched the feathers of doves, setting them free to flutter around their homes, scenting the air with every beat of their fragrant wings.
Perhaps Aunt Yu Mei knew this; perhaps that was why she insisted I accompany her every year.
The sharpest memory I still held of my mother was of the period during her illness when I was seven. She and my father had been visiting the tin mines in Sungai Lembing, a one-street town located in a central state of Malaya. She had accompanied him in his search for a rare butterfly, and when they returned home she started to show the symptoms of malaria. There were no complications and she should have recovered, but who is to question such things? My father turned one of the rooms into a sanatorium, appointed a nurse to look after her, and had the doctors visit our home twice a day. During that time only Aunt Yu Mei visited. My grandfather stayed away.
She slept most of the time, even when I was brought in to see her. The smell of her room—of the frangipani flowers she so loved that were placed there by my father daily—made me nauseous. I would make excuses to avoid going in there, especially when the fever seized and shook her. I spent more time on the beach, hidden away so no one could find me. When she died the servants had to search the beach to take me home.
I could only stand in silence when my father saw me after the servants finally brought me to her room. He walked around the bed and even then I did not feel his arms around me. I saw only my mother, eyes closed, skin pulled taut, her famous cheekbones now unnaturally high and sharp.
As though to compensate for the horror of the previous weeks, the funeral was beautiful. It was a Buddhist ceremony, though the local Anglican priest had protested strongly. It was a puzzle to me why he had done so—my mother had never been a Christian. All of us attended the ceremony, much to the priest’s disapproval.
On the day of the funeral, three monks came to Istana. I stood by a window and watched them as they entered th
e driveway. They walked across the lawn—the grass so young and new it gave off an unnatural luminescence—past the stone fountain that my mother had loved so much and through the doorway with the cross hanging above the lintel. The monks’ saffron robes seemed to catch fire in the sun, so that they looked like flames blowing into our home. The monks led the ceremony that went on through the night until dawn. They rang their bells and chanted from a tattered book, circling the coffin, leading the spirit to its destination, ensuring it would not lose its way.
William tried to comfort me, but I pushed him away. Isabel cried softly. She had found a replacement mother in mine after her own mother’s death, and now had lost another one. Edward stood in a corner, solemn but unaffected; he had not been close to my mother. My father reached for my hand. He tried to smile but was overcome by sorrow. I pulled my hand away and he did not even feel it. I was suddenly sorry for my fears and disgust of the past weeks, sorry I could not see or touch my mother again. She was gone.
In the weeks after the funeral my father spent more time with his children—especially me—and Isabel and William tried to include me in outings with their friends. But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island that Endo-san would one day make his home.
The thin, childlike cries of the swallows brought me back to the Wat Chaiya Mangkalaram Temple. I inserted the joss sticks into the ashes in the vase, making sure all three sticks were straight and would not lean to one side. Aunt Mei was very particular about such matters.
We tidied up the table and packed our little basket. The fruit would be left for the monks. A few worshippers glanced at me as we walked out. As we passed a wall of murals, each panel a scene from the life of the Buddha, Aunt Mei said, “Your grandfather would like to see you.”