The Gift of Rain: A Novel

by Tan Twan Eng

  Chapter Eight

  Endo-san’s chauffeur dropped us at Weld Quay, in Georgetown harbor. The visit to Kuala Lumpur had been postponed for more than a month due to his work commitments and by now I was quite impatient to get going. We pushed our way through Chinese and Tamil dock coolies as they ran about, shouting and pushing carts of smoked rubber sheets, tin ingots, and bags of cloves and peppercorns. Rickshaws clattered past, their wheels bouncing on the uneven roads. I felt the sense of excitement of one about to rush headlong into an adventure and an unrestrained smile spread over my face. Endo-san saw it, and his eyes danced in reply.

  He had chartered a small steamer from a Dutchman and we waited at the end of the pier for a boat to carry us to where the Peranakan lay. The small, almost flat-bottomed sampan, rowed by a Malay boy, smelled of dried fish and rotting wood. The steamer lay angled on its side, waiting for the tide to lift it out of its rest. It was small compared to the others we saw moving out to sea. A few planks of a different shade had been hammered over the cabin and the deck had a faded canvas awning to keep the sun out. Two wooden chairs were placed under it. A small banner of smoke hung above the blackened funnel.

  As we climbed aboard, the sun seemed to make up its mind and rose rapidly. The light spread like golden powder flung by some sweeping hand. I looked back at the harbor. The shore was lined with godowns and braced with a line of stilts and walkways. Tiny figures ran on them, some in white vests, others bare to the waist. The Tamils wore white headcloths and their voices sounded like the cries of the gulls now flying above us. Beyond the harbor, the low humps of the island appeared like moss-pelted boulders, and the tiny homes embedded in the side of Penang Hill glinted bright as dewdrops.

  The sea around us lightened, changing from the thick murkiness of early dawn to a clear emerald. Shoals of tiny fish, so translucent that they left no shadows on the sand bed, darted away at our movements. A few jellyfish floated in the water, their tentacles flowing behind the unseen currents like a girl’s hair in the wind.

  The Dutchman met us on deck, his face burned to a wooden brown, his eyes the color of the sea, only clearer, brighter. When he took off his cap his bald scalp had the hardness and glossiness of a nut. He appeared to be in his fifties and looked quite strong, an impression heightened by a big hard stomach that seemed to come between us as we spoke.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Endo,” he said.

  Endo-san introduced me to Captain Albertus van Dobbelsteen.

  The captain looked at me closely when Endo-san mentioned my name. “Hutton, from the company?” he asked.

  “That’s correct,” I replied, looking at Endo-san and wondering what the Dutchman’s story was.

  The Malay boy hauled our bags aboard and tied the sampan to the steamer. The wooden boards creaked as we moved under the canvas. Endo-san sat down but I leaned over the railing, loving the wind and the flecks of water that sprayed me as the steamer gave a shudder and came to life. Like a fist, a cloud of thick black smoke punched out of the funnel and then opened into the wind, followed by a steady, gray stream that trailed behind us.

  I put on a straw hat and smiled idiotically to Endo-san. I could not help it; the feeling of excitement, of something new, sang in my blood and made my head light.

  “I take it you have never been on board one of these before?”

  “No, never in my life.” In all my previous journeys to Kuala Lumpur with my father we had traveled by rail: across mist-covered limestone hills, through dark green forests.

  “Then you are going to enjoy these few days. We won’t be rushing, because there will be a stop I would like to make.”

  I waved a hand to indicate my indifference. The distance from Penang to Port Swettenham, where we would have to disembark to enter Kuala Lumpur, was about five hundred miles. We would be tracing the coastline, keeping within sight of it for most of the journey.

  “The captain doesn’t seem to like me,” I said, tipping my head toward the cabin.

  “Albertus? He used to sail for your father’s company up and down the Yangtze River in China until he was sacked a year ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “There were complaints—he could not keep his hands off the crew. Also, he happened to be drunk most of the time. Don’t worry, he is sober now. And when he is, he is one of the best steamer captains there is. These Yangtze sailors are the best.”

  I looked back at the cabin, wondering if my father had personally dismissed the captain. Noel Hutton could be hard and unrelenting when it came to doing the best for his business. From company gossip I knew which misdemeanor would have been the deciding factor: he would never tolerate a drunken ship’s captain. For a moment I felt sorry for Captain Albertus but he appeared to be doing well for himself.

  We had a late breakfast, cooked by the Malay boy—coconut rice and a sweet and spicy anchovy paste, with a perfectly fried egg on top—nasi lemak, I told Endo-san. Captain Albertus joined us, drinking coffee from a chipped enamel mug. He handed us a small jar and said, “Put this on when the sun gets higher.”

  I opened it and took a sniff. “Coconut cream.”

  “And some herbs and oil. My own concoction. Helps to avoid sunburn,” Captain Albertus replied.

  The cream was soon put to use as the heat baked us. The sun was alone: the clouds had deserted the skies. We were on the most famous straits in the world, making the same journey seafarers had been making for hundreds of years, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Spanish, Dutch, and British. And before them, who knows?

  I sat next to Endo-san and gave a contented sigh. He looked up from his book and said, “Happy?”

  I nodded and then began to tell him of my visit to Aunt Mei. He put aside his book and leaned back. “Tell me about your mother.”

  I told him what I could remember, treading water in the shallows of my memory. “Now my grandfather, whom I’ve never seen, and who cut off my mother from her family when she married my father, wants to see me.”

  “Then you should see him. Family is the most important thing you will ever have.”

  “You really think I should see my grandfather?”

  “Hai. You may even find that you like him,” he said, and returned to his book.

  I thought of the grandfather I had never met, and wondered what he wanted from me. I examined my feelings for him and found I felt barely anything, except a glimmer of obstinate dislike that seemed to originate more from a sense of rejection than anything else.

  Halfway through our journey the chord of the engines changed. It was three in the afternoon and I had fallen asleep on deck. I woke up as I felt the slight turn in direction. I shaded my eyes and looked around me.

  We were approaching the coastal mangrove swamps. The shoreline came closer, the waves making an effervescent line of white on the rocks. There was no beach in sight, just an endless row of mangrove trees, their roots exposed as the tide started to withdraw, leaving them slick and glistening and arthritic. The water around us lost its turquoise color, tainted by the rusty leaching of the roots, like leftover tea. Birds chased their reflections on the water and flew in and out of the jungle rising above the trees.

  The engines stopped and I could suddenly hear the silence of the swamp, threaded through with birdcalls and the drilling of insects. The lap of water against the roots sounded dispirited. As we swayed in the backwash of the waves the Malay boy dropped the anchor. Through a break in the mangroves a landing platform jutted out, and on it a mongrel dog stood barking at us, hopping left and right in that futile and idiotic way that only dogs have.

  “Where are we?” I asked Endo-san when he climbed out from the cabin.

  “Just twenty miles south of Pangkor Island. I did not wake you up as we passed it; you were sleeping so deeply. We are getting off here, at Kampung Pangkor.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  The Malay boy loaded the sampan with boxes taken from the cargo h
old. We climbed down a rope ladder into the sampan and Captain Albertus brought us to the jetty. Endo-san held a long box which I had helped carry onto the steamer. It had felt strangely heavy but I had refrained from asking about its contents.

  By the time we reached the jetty a small crowd had gathered. They were Malays, dark-skinned and wide-eyed, who stared at us, chattering loudly.

  A small Japanese man appeared through the crowd, bowing to Endo-san once we had climbed onto the platform. They walked away, talking in Japanese. I followed at a distance, hearing Captain Albertus shout to the villagers to take care with the boxes. Behind the mangrove swamp, the village appeared busy. The narrow lanes were muddy and slippery. Chickens ran around the little plots of vegetables fronting the small wooden shacks built on stilts. A wide estuary curved around the village and, on its banks, tied to poles, was a line of fishing boats with clumps of nets hanging on their sides like fuzzy growths of fungus.

  We followed the small Japanese to the provision store he owned. He closed the door and pushed away some salted fish lying on a counter. The store was heavy with the smell of old onions and chillies and mice. He lit a pipe, saw the look of annoyance on Endo-san’s face and hastily put it away.

  “Kanazawa-san,” Endo-san introduced him to me.

  “Konichiwa, Kanazawa-san,” I greeted him and bowed. The man looked surprised, but returned my greeting politely.

  Endo-san opened the box and picked out a rifle. The smell of gun oil and powder charged the stuffy air and I felt my stomach churn.

  Endo-san led me along a fern-covered path and for the first time in my life I entered the real jungle of Malaya. Beetles crawled up tree trunks, their crab-like pincers rasping on the bark. Butterflies, some bigger than my palm, soared away as we rustled the bushes. Behind us lay the village, but I knew I was lost. We had been walking for half an hour, climbing over fallen trees and crossing a riverbed strewn with smooth round rocks. We came to a clearing and he unslung the rifle. He took a small box containing bullets from his pocket, and loaded it.

  “Why do I have to learn how to shoot?” I asked. Isabel was a champion marksman at the Penang Shooting Club, but I had never been keen on the sport.

  “As your sensei, my duties are not confined to the dojo.” He swept his hand around, indicating the forests, the columns of trees soaring to the emerald canopy above. “This, the whole world, is your dojo.”

  He handed me the rifle and using a knife cut a small circle in a tree. It seemed too far away. “Utilize the principles of aikijutsu. Focus, extend your thought, your ki. Breathe, and relax.”

  I stared at him, uncertain. For the first time since we met I felt unwilling to follow his instructions. He saw my hesitation and showed me the movement, which he made so fluid and assured. His eye went to the sight, his body into a side stance. I heard him exhale and then the sound of the shot. A small burst of splintered bark exploded and the echo of the shot set a thousand flapping wings in flight.

  “Follow what I have just demonstrated,” he said. There was no possibility that I could disobey the tone of his voice.

  I took the rifle again and repeated his movements with as much accuracy as I could achieve. The gun was heavy and the first shot arced high into the leaves as I stumbled backward.

  “Extend your hand, keep the extension and the kick will not unsettle you.”

  My ears rang and I steadied myself. Little by little I managed to get it right, although by that time the tree had been mutilated. Sap ran down the trunk like blood from a severed artery and shreds of wood lay scattered around its roots.

  We stopped when my hands were trembling from the shooting and my shoulders felt sore. “I’m not expected to use this, am I?”

  “No,” he replied. “But it may be useful to know how to. My grandfather taught my father to shoot when the Americans came to my country. It was virtually impossible to obtain these foreign weapons, but my grandfather did. I was taught, using similar weapons, by my father.”

  “What does Kanazawa-san require the rifles for?” I asked, when he allowed me a moment’s rest. I was trying a different tack to get him to answer my question. Lead the mind, and the rest will follow, Endo-san had instructed me so many times. Learning to use a rifle in the jungle was quite different from the bantering atmosphere at the Penang Shooting Club where Isabel practiced. The whole journey, which had begun on an enjoyable note, now seemed filled with an uncertainty. Perhaps it was being in the heart of this untamed land where anything could happen. I had swum too far out from shore, lured on by something beyond my confined life, and suddenly I wanted only to head for home.

  It would never cease to be a cause of wonder that Endo-san could sense my every mood and uncover my uncertainties. He took the rifle from me and said, “Knowing how to shoot does not mean you have to use it. In fact, I would prefer that you never use it. I have never used a weapon against anyone, least of all something as unrefined as a firearm. If you are strong here,” he touched my head gently, “no one will be able to force you to resort to it.”

  He sat down on the root of a fig tree. “Do you understand?”

  “Resistance,” I said. “To strengthen my mind, there must be resistance, something hard enough to fight against.”

  Endo-san nodded. “Kanazawa-san runs the local provision store, as you have seen. Now and again he has requests for special items. He takes care of the few Japanese rubber buyers working in this area. Pirates have been attacking his village. He has to have some means of protection.”

  “Pirates?” I asked. “Where from?”

  He shrugged. “Sumatra, or Java. The villagers’ fishing has been affected because they fear going out to sea.”

  “Why is Kanazawa-san here, in this part of the country?”

  Endo-san did not reply. He stood up and bowed. “We will end our lesson here. It is getting dark. I think we should get back to the village.”

  As he led us out of the jungle, I realized that, although I had tried to lead his thoughts to where I wanted them, he had without effort lifted me off the ground and spun me around in more circles. A part of me wondered at what he did not say, but another part of me was once again made aware that I had been chosen by a remarkable teacher, and that fact was of greater importance to me.

  We were put up at Kanazawa’s house and his wife fussed over Endo-san and me during dinner, pouring us cups of tea and sake.

  I met some of the Japanese rubber buyers. They were all quite young, all of them could speak the Malay language, and each had an indefinable toughness in him. I would not be able to identify this quality of theirs until I began training with some of the consulate’s staff, and only then it would come to me that the rubber buyers I had met had the air of well-trained soldiers.

  They talked of a recent attack by the pirates. “These new weapons will be very useful to us,” one said. “Now we can get rid of them all.”

  “We’ve already killed quite a few,” another said, lifting his sake cup. They all laughed, but the mood turned somber as more sake was consumed.

  “Where are you from, Endo-san?” a rubber buyer asked.

  Endo-san said, “The village of Toriijima, Toshi-san.”

  “A most beautiful place. I once saw the shrine at sunrise,” Toshi said. “I wish I could see it again. Don’t you miss your home?”

  Toshi looked around the table. The question was directed to no one in particular, but the rubber buyers looked to Endo-san.

  “I do. We all miss our homes. I am certain you miss your family and the women who are waiting for your return,” Endo-san said and I heard a low note of sadness in his words. “But we have our duty. If we fail in our duty, we fail our country, and our family.” He looked firmly at me as he said this, as though hoping that, some day, I would understand.

  Endo-san spent the next morning conferring with Kanazawa and I was left to wander along the river, keeping my eyes on the banks for crocodiles hiding among the mangroves. I was reminded of the Malay folktale of the cunnin
g mouse deer which, while drinking by a river, has its leg captured in the jaws of a crocodile. It escapes being eaten by deceiving the predator into believing that the captured leg is only the root of a mangrove tree.

  Storks stood unmoving in the rusted shallows, watching me. The strength of the wind seemed able to only rustle the fringe of the jungles, leaving the deeper interior unruffled.

  The storks heard the planes before I did. There was a frantic beating of wings as two Buffalo planes from the Royal Australian Air Force flew low over the hills and along the estuary. The storks opened their wings and rose above the river into the trees as the planes headed out to the sea, the sun shining on their cockpits. A crocodile I had missed thrashed into the river to burrow into the mud.

  I saw Endo-san emerge from Kanazawa’s store and went to meet him. “Get ready to leave,” he said. “And we have a new passenger.”

  Two of the Japanese men I had met the night before at Kanazawa-san’s home led a man from a wooden shack, his hands bound with rope, and brought him to the jetty.

  “But he is a Japanese,” I said.

  “That makes his crime more serious.”

  I waited for Endo-san to explain. “Yasuaki was caught stealing from Kanazawa-san’s shop. He had been doing it for some weeks,” Endo-san said.

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He was making preparations to run away, to abandon his duty. He was appointed to purchase rubber for his country. But instead he spent his time with the local women, and fell in love with one of them. The theft of food and supplies was to enable him to run off with this woman.”

  “And for that he is to be punished?” I asked.

  “You have absorbed your lessons well, but you have yet to comprehend how important the concept of duty is,” Endo-san said.

  “Duty even above love?” I asked, thinking of his words the night before at the dinner table: If we fail in our duty, we fail our country, and our family. The Japanese people held duty in high esteem, I had learned, but to see it impose its unbending burden on the most timeless of human needs made me question the value of it.