by Tan Twan Eng
He heard the tone of my voice, and softened the harshness of his words. “It has always been so in our way of life. One cannot escape it.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“That will depend on the authorities in Kuala Lumpur. He will probably be sent back to Japan.”
“Will he see the woman again?”
Endo-san shook his head and climbed into the sampan.
We passed a few fishing boats, which had dared to brave the dangers of the pirates, returning home after a night’s work. The men on board seemed to recognize the Peranakan, giving short bursts from their horns and calling out to Captain Albertus. When we neared Port Swettenham a shoal of flying fish shot out from the sea and soared alongside us before dropping back into the water. I stood on the stern, waiting for them to appear again, to lose their ties to the sea and, for a few moments, to find a new identity as they took their breath not from water but from wind.
Yasuaki, the Japanese rubber buyer who had placed love before his duty, watched me. Endo-san had asked me to untie his ropes and now he leaned against the stern and said, “I feel sorry for you.”
“Why?” I asked, shading my eyes against the light, hoping to see more of the flying fish.
“Nothing good will come from your association with us,” he said.
I turned away from the sea and studied him with greater attention. I placed him around Edward’s age, maybe older. Until now he had remained silent, perhaps thinking of the woman he had been separated from.
“What was her name?” I asked.
“You are the first person who has asked me her name. But what does her name matter?” Nevertheless, he looked pleased that I had asked.
“I would like to know,” I said.
He studied me for a moment. “Her name is Aslina.”
“Was she a girl from the village?”
He shook his head. “Her father ran the canteen at the airfield near the village. You would have seen the planes when they flew past. They do it every day.”
I had found a map and studied it in Kanazawa’s shop. The village we had spent the night in was an hour from Ipoh. The map showed an air force landing strip only half an hour east of the village, marked in red by the Japanese shopkeeper.
“Was she worth disobeying your duty?” I asked.
“I could not be placed in a position where I would have to harm her, or her people,” he replied.
“Harm her? How?” I asked, but he had turned back to the flying fish, an expression of longing on his face.
“You must really love her,” I said, feeling suddenly sad. I had never felt such an emotion. Isabel often went on at length about it, although we teased her. I had always thought love was a thing only young girls fretted about, but here was a seemingly intelligent man who had experienced it, and who now was paying dearly for it—his reputation ruined, the girl he loved lost to him.
“Have you ever met someone who is so close to you, so right, that nothing else matters? Somebody who, without being told, knows each and every aspect of you?”
I looked at him, uncertain of what he was trying to tell me.
“Well, that is how I feel with Aslina. And duty?” His voice turned bitter. “Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others. Others who do not have your interests at heart.”
I was about to ask him more, but Endo-san came over to me and said, “Get your things together. We will be reaching Port Swettenham very soon.”
Chapter Nine
We arrived in Port Swettenham late in the afternoon. I watched as Yasuaki was led away by the staff of the Japanese Embassy. I raised my hand in a small wave but he never returned it.
A car with a Japanese driver took us into Kuala Lumpur. We entered the town an hour later, and I recalled the last time I had been here. It was almost ten months before, when we celebrated my father’s forty-ninth birthday in the Spotted Dog Club just in front of the cricket padang in the center of the town. The ground was busy now, the cricketers running between the shadows cast by the court buildings across the road. I heard the thock of the ball hitting the bat and then cheers as the batsmen ran. It was a typical afternoon in the biggest town in Malaya: the English would leave their sweltering offices, go to the Spotted Dog to have a gin and tonic, play some cricket, and then return home for a bath before coming back to the club for dinner and some dancing. It was a good life, a rich life filled with ease and enjoyment.
The Japanese Embassy was a converted bungalow on a hill just behind Carcosa, once the official home of the Resident General of the Federated Malay States. The road leading up to it was cool and shady, the old angsana trees littering the way with leaves and pods and twigs that crackled under our tires. The sentry at the gates saluted us through.
A youth in military uniform brought our bags to our rooms. The fan was switched on immediately. Then we went out onto the verandah where we were served glasses of iced tea.
The Embassy looked down a wooded slope thick with flame-of-the-forest trees. I stood drinking my tea and thought about the concept of duty, which had troubled me during the entire drive. It was so confusing and, it seemed to me at that moment, so pointless. Where was the freedom of choice that each of us had been born with?
Endo-san had told me at the beginning of my lessons how strong the duty of teaching was, once undertaken. It was never offered freely or haphazardly. A prospective student had to provide letters of recommendation in order to convince a sensei to accept him. Teaching could never be accepted without all its burdens and obligations and I had come to understand this eventually. Yet in my mind I heard Yasuaki’s words, warning me about duty and generals and emperors. A moment of unease made me finish my drink in a single swallow.
“We must pay our respects to Saotome Akasaki-san, the ambassador to Malaya,” Endo-san said, beckoning to me to follow him downstairs.
Although the bungalow was built in the typical Anglo-Indian style, with wide wooden verandas and large airy ceilings, it had been decorated strictly by a Japanese hand. The rooms were partitioned by paper shoji screens, scrolls of calligraphy hung at well-lit positions and a faint smell of incense cleansed the air as we passed. Stark, skeletal flower arrangements stood on low tables. “These are Saotome-san’s personal arrangements,” Endo-san said. “His ikebana has won prizes in Tokyo.”
Another youth in uniform slid open a door and we placed our cotton slippers outside before entering. The room was bare, save for a photograph of a sullen-looking man. Endo-san knelt on the straw mats and bowed to it. I did not, but I presumed the portrait to be that of Hirohito, the emperor of Japan. We sat with our buttocks on our heels and waited for Saotome-san to join us. He entered and there was a flurry of bows before we were at last comfortable, sitting in front of a low wooden table.
The ambassador was a distinguished, almost haughty-looking man, except when he smiled. Then he looked merely handsome and ordinary. In his dark hakama and black and gray yukata robe patterned with silver chrysanthemum blossoms he appeared much older than Endo-san, although his movements were just as graceful.
“Is this your student I have heard about?” he asked in English, smiling at me. His voice was like rice paper, thin and brittle. I could picture him as somebody’s grandfather.
“Hai, Saotome-san,” Endo-san replied, indicating for me to serve the hot sake.
“How is his progress?”
“Very good. He has made tremendous advances, physically and mentally.”
Endo-san had never once expressly commented on my studies. Now, to hear it before the ambassador was pleasurable. It added to the warm glow left by the sake.
They switched to Japanese immediately, the older man looking intently at me to see if I could follow. His accent was slightly rougher than Endo-san’s but, after a few sentences, I sailed with the flow of their conversation.
We were served dinner, which came on little po
rcelain plates, each with just one or two pieces of food. I enjoyed the marinated eel, the sweetened chicken and the little rolls of raw fish wrapped in rice and seaweed. The two Japanese men ate daintily, examining their food in the chopsticks, commenting on the taste and color and texture, almost as though they were making an artistic acquisition. I was famished and had to restrain myself from eating too much, too fast.
“How is the situation in Penang?” Saotome asked, placing his chopsticks on an ivory rest.
“Quiet and peaceful. Our people are contented and there are no distressing matters,” Endo-san replied. “We have found a suitable house on Penang Hill to lease for our staff and their families. I will show you some photographs later. Apart from that, I have almost unlimited free time and we have been traveling around the island.”
Saotome-san smiled. “Ah, such splendid days, hm?” he said in English. I stopped eating, knowing it was a direct reference to me. Suddenly the old man did not seem so benign. I felt like a mouse before a tiger.
“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said, disregarding all the lessons I had learned and confronting him directly.
“We make a point of knowing our friends,” Saotome said. “I hear your father is the head of the largest trading company in Malaya?”
“Not the largest—that would be Empire Trading.”
“We have some businessmen interested in Malaya. Would your father consider collaborating with them? To be partners with these people? They are keen to obtain a share in your father’s company.”
I thought of what he wanted to know. Deep down, I suspected our future could depend on the answer I gave. I said carefully, “I think he would be willing to listen—after all, he has nothing against your countrymen—but I can’t speak for my father. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
Saotome leaned back and said, “Oh. I suppose we would have to.” He picked up another piece of fish. “Would you consider working for us, once you have finished your studies? I understand you have only another year to go.”
I gave Endo-san a questioning look. “In what capacity?” I asked.
“As an interpreter, a person to liaise with the Europeans and the Malayan people. A goodwill officer, you might say.” Saotome saw my uncertainty. “You do not have to reply now. The work will be interesting I can assure you.”
I promised Saotome that I would consider his offer, and he smiled and said, “Now, would you like to have more of that eel? I saw you were quite, quite hungry.”
The shoji door opened and a soldier knelt and bowed to Saotome. Next to him was a young Chinese girl in a robe, her hair tied into two lacquered balls.
No words crossed the space between us and the kneeling figures until Saotome said, “Lift her face to me.”
The soldier put his fingers under the girl’s chin and brought it up.
“Open her robes.”
The same hand dropped from the girl’s chin and pulled her robes open to one side, revealing a single breast, uncertain of its shape yet, still breaking into womanhood.
Saotome studied her and gave a smile, tiny as a cut. His throat pulsed and his tongue touched briefly the corner of his lips, an artist’s brush adding the final perfecting stroke.
I found the eel did not taste so sweet now.
For the next few days I was left alone. Endo-san had to attend various meetings with Saotome and I wandered about the streets. I was disappointed, for I had hoped to show him the town and my father’s office. I walked through the commercial center on my own, marveling at the new shops and the crowds of people. Like Penang, the town was segregated into different sections by race. I had to struggle to remember my rusty Cantonese in order to speak to the Chinese here. Unlike the Hokkien Chinese of Penang, almost all of them were immigrants from the province of Kwang-tung, attracted by the tales of wealth and success brought back to China by those of their countrymen fortunate enough to grow rich in the dangerous and soul-sapping tin mines around Kuala Lumpur and the Kinta Valley, where Ipoh was situated.
I sat in a tearoom and thought again about my grandfather. I wondered what sort of a man he was to cut my mother off so completely. What was so wrong with marrying someone outside your own people? Why was the world so concerned with such matters?
The owner of the tearoom came for my order, asking in English what I wanted. I saw the expected look of surprise and barely concealed disgust when I answered in Cantonese. That was my burden—I looked too foreign for the Chinese, and too Oriental for the Europeans. I was not the only one—there was a whole society of so-called Eurasians in Malaya—but even then I felt I would not belong among them. I felt as Endo-san and the Japanese people here must feel: they were hated by the locals as well as by the British and Americans, for their exploits in China were now becoming daily topics of debate from the street peddlers to the Europeans drinking their ice-cold gin in the Spotted Dog. Yet I had seen another side of them—I had seen the fragile beauty of their way of life, their appreciation of the sorrowful, transient aspects of nature, of life itself. Surely such sensitivities should count?
I thought back to the conversation with Saotome. There had been a hidden layer of meaning, I was sure. Did the Japanese wish to set up a company to compete against ours or did they intend to make my father an offer of purchase? I knew we would never sell. In his own way, my father was as Oriental in his thinking as the people of Penang. The company was to be held only by the family. Graham Hutton would not have allowed its sale. The only way the Japanese could obtain Hutton and Sons was to take it by force and there was no way that would be condoned by the British.
At the railway station I telephoned Aunt Mei. The platforms were busy, the early morning sun gilding the onion-shaped domes on their tall minarets, finding its way through the gaps in the Moorish cupolas and arches. The station was one of the loveliest buildings I had ever seen. Endo-san sat on a bench, reading a file from Saotome. A shaft of sunlight spilling through a roof window made him seem to glow.
I told Aunt Mei that I would get off at the station in Ipoh, and I obtained the address of my grandfather from her. “Please let him know I’ll visit him, Aunt Mei.”
“Yes, yes, of course I will tell him that. I am glad you wish to.”
“I want to tell him he was wrong to have treated my mother so badly. There was good in their marriage.”
There was a short silence and then she said, “There were indeed a lot of good things. You are one of them.”
Endo-san waved to me and I hung up the phone after thanking her, and we boarded the train.
The journey was pleasant, the scenery a rushing blur of greenery broken by clumps of little villages near the tracks. Whenever we slowed down at these villages a cluster of naked children ran alongside the train and we pulled down our windows to buy food and drinks from them. I pointed out water buffalo lying in muddy rice fields and once we had to stop as an elephant and her calf crossed the tracks. Near the town of Ipoh the train went across a vast lake, its surface smooth and reflective, so that for the ten minutes required to cross it I felt we were skimming across a pool of mercury. Herons flew alongside us and rose over the carriages, circling to land at the reed-covered edges of the lake. When I saw the gray-white limestone cliffs of Ipoh grow nearer I said, “I’ll have to get off soon.”
“Will you be all right?” Endo-san asked.
“I think so. It shouldn’t be too hard, seeing someone who has never meant anything in my life before.”
“You must not be bitter, or judge him before you get to know him,” he said.
“I don’t know if I’ll get to know him,” I said. The thought of establishing a connection, an understanding between my grandfather and myself, did not appeal to me and I was starting to regret my decision to see him. We would have nothing in common to bind us.
“Do not turn back now,” Endo-san said. “I have no doubt in my mind at all that it will be your grandfather who will make sure you get to know him. And I am certain the means he will use to achie
ve this will be quite unusual.”
“You’ve met him, haven’t you?” I asked, making a guess.
“I have,” he said. When I remained silent he became curious. “You are not going to ask me when and why?”
“I’m sure you had good reasons,” I replied. I thought back to that day on the ledge up on Penang Hill when I decided to trust him completely. I told him that now, and a shade of sorrow darkened his eyes.
“Sumimasen. I am sorry,” he said, after a while.
I was about to ask him what he was apologizing for when the train slowed down and we entered Ipoh station. I tidied the table in the compartment and threw away the little packets of food.
“You have to go,” he said, pulling my bag from the overhead rack. He opened his wallet. “Do you have enough money?”
“Yes,” I smiled, touched by his concern. “My grandfather is one of the wealthiest men in Malaya, you know.”
“Take some money anyway. I will see you in Penang. Come to the island when you return home.”
“I will.” I gave him a quick hug and got down on to the platform. I turned and waved to him once and then walked out of the station.
Chapter Ten
I was not surprised to find a car waiting for me. The old Indian driver leaning against it straightened when he saw me come out into the sunshine. “Mr. Hutton?”
I gave him a quick nod.
“Your grandfather’s house is not far away,” he said as he opened the door for me.
I had never been to Ipoh. My father had never brought us here, even though we owned mines in the Kinta Valley surrounding the town. Ipoh was originally just a little tin-mining village, fought over by the warring princes of the Perak Sultanate until the British intervened to prevent the succession of wars from spilling out into their neighboring protectorates. Chinese coolies were soon imported to work the mines, and by their ingenuity and hard work the village grew into a sizeable if charmless town with its own railway station, schools, courts, and wealthy residential districts. Ipoh was well known for the caves in the limestone cliffs that surrounded it. Many of them had been used by hermits and sages seeking to meditate in seclusion from the world. After they died or disappeared, temples were built in these caves to deify them.