The Gift of Rain: A Novel

by Tan Twan Eng

  We cycled along a narrow lane bordered by tall wild-grass, and then onto a sandy path that went downhill. I would not have found the place if I had been on my own.

  At the bottom of the path we came to a wooden bungalow with a veranda running around it and a thatched attap roof that sat on it like a straw hat. A pair of coconut trees stood bent over it at one side, their leaves giving sound to the wind. Squirrels scampered on the sparse lawn, running up the trees, chattering busily, when we approached.

  Hideki Tanaka waited at the top of the steps, his face impassive though not unfriendly. Like Endo-san’s, his hair was cropped short and gray, but he had a larger, thicker figure.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said in Japanese.

  I nodded my head and bowed deeply.

  We sat on the veranda facing the sea. The tide was low, and flocks of gulls and birds hopped on the exposed beach, their beaks piercing the sand for food. The empty beach stretched as far as the eye could travel, the seabed as black and rich as newly ploughed fields. Pools of water were trapped between the bumpy sand ridges created by the receding tide, and I wondered where all the sea had gone.

  “Sometimes I feel I could walk all the way across to the mainland, across this sea that has opened before us,” Tanaka said, following my gaze. “Walk all the way home.”

  “Like Moses,” I answered.

  He looked puzzled, as though I had named a friend he had forgotten, then his face cleared. “Ah, yes. The prophet who parted the Red Sea. A charming story.” He instructed Kon to make us tea.

  I felt peaceful sitting with him, yet underlying his tranquil mood was a strong sense of loneliness. I recognized it as I had sensed the same in Endo-san. How strange to find two such similar Japanese on this island.

  Kon came out with hot green tea and for a while we sipped in silence, taking in each other, gazing out over the earth left behind by the vanished sea.

  “Kon told me about you last night, how you fought him to the ground. He was very displeased by that.” Tanaka laughed. “Very few people have ever defeated him. That is why I told him, practice zazen, practice it every day. The power of the mind will always overcome the strength and weakness of the body.”

  “Do you know my sensei?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Endo Hayato-san. From one of the well-known families near Toriijima.”

  “You don’t have a high regard for him?” I ventured.

  “We studied under the same teacher, Ueshiba-sensei.”

  I waited for him to explain; his reply had been typical of the sort Endo-san gave me whenever he did not wish me to pursue a matter. I looked directly at Tanaka, letting him know that I had not been fooled by his evasion. Tanaka gave a smile but did not elaborate.

  I sighed inwardly, and asked, “What was Ueshiba-sensei like?”

  “The gentlest, kindest person I’ve ever known. But also terribly hot-tempered. The greatest budoka—martial artist—Japan has ever produced. Endo-san was one of his best pupils. As was I.”

  “How did the two of you end up here, on this island?”

  “I don’t know. Fate? Endo-san left Ueshiba-sensei a few months before I did. There was some disagreement between them. I didn’t know he was here until a few months after I arrived. By that time I had settled in and bought this house. I had traveled all over Asia, and strangely seemed to find an affinity with this island. So I stayed.” He sighed. “To attempt to find some peace.”

  “Strange,” I said. “That was what Endo-san said to me too. To find peace.”

  “You must understand, Japan is undergoing a social upheaval. There’s a lot of hatred and ambition there, a bad combination. The Militarists and the Imperialists are agitating for war. Some of us don’t believe in war, and thus we are considered traitors and outcasts.

  “I was ordered to teach the army recruits. To teach aikijutsu in order for people to be able to kill and murder. Aikijutsu, the very concept of which is based on love and harmony! I could not do so and neither could my sensei. To avoid further orders from the government he moved to Hokkaido Island, cut himself off from the world and started a farm there. I chose to leave Japan.”

  I was certain there was more to this story than he was revealing, but I respected his intentions not to tell me more. He sent Kon inside to boil more water.

  “Do you have great affection for Endo-san?” he asked, pouring me another cup of tea. I felt a growing sense of well-being, sitting under the shade of the veranda, listening to the birds and the leaves, feeling the breeze on my body.

  I considered his question. “Yes. Yes, I do admire him. I also have strong feelings for him. Not a day goes by that I do not wonder what he is doing, where he is at that moment. He makes me happy to be alive ...” I said, my voice trailing off, unable to put what I felt into words.

  “That’s good. I think, in the end, it’s your love for him which will save him.”

  “Save him? From what?”

  He merely gave a smile and I knew I would not obtain any more from him on that subject. Once again I resolved to ask Endo-san about his life before he left Japan.

  Tanaka attempted to hit me then, his fist light and blurred like a tiercel swooping down to capture its prey. I avoided it by shifting my seated body to one side. When he pulled back to withdraw his hand my arm stuck to his, following it back to him, turning it into an attack on him. He turned his torso and overextended me until I was off-balance. I pushed myself to a crouch and shot out a side-kick at him, which I knew immediately was a mistake. He swept it easily aside and slammed me facedown onto the wooden floor. All this while he was still seated in the seiza position, his face devoid of expression.

  “Your suwariwaza—sitting techniques—are still relatively weak. You must practice them more often. If you are strong even while sitting in this uncomfortable position, then think how much stronger you will be when you are upright, neh?”

  He hauled me up while I tried to cool my flaring temper. I realized he had a point. I turned and bowed to him, my forehead touching the ground. “I appreciate your guidance,” I said. “Would you consider teaching me?”

  He shook his head. “It would be against all ethics to teach you while you are still the pupil of another sensei. However,” he looked up as Kon came to stand at the doorway, “there’s no rule against the two of you learning from each other. I’m of the opinion that the two of you will benefit greatly from being friends.”

  Kon smiled and I knew we were both thinking of our shared laughter the night before. I had found a similar soul.

  Tanaka became serious, his voice almost insistent. “Endo-san has trained you well. Now it is up to you to find out why he has done so.”

  I was growing worried about Endo-san’s absence when I found a note from him, telling me he had returned. Something in me leaped like a fish in clear water and a lightness danced within me as I rowed to his island. I approached the thicket of trees with eagerness and called out his name as I neared the house.

  He looked dark and sunburned, and his hair shone brighter in contrast. “Welcome home, sensei,” I greeted him, and I knew he was happy to see me. He invited me into his house, and we sat in front of the hearth.

  “Have you been keeping well?” he asked.

  “Yes, Endo-san,” I said. I had been disturbed by my conversation with Tanaka and I wondered now if I should tell Endo-san about it. I hesitated. Then I decided that I did not want to keep anything from him, so I described my meeting with Kon’s sensei. He did not appear unduly surprised, but when I asked if he would like to visit Tanaka, his voice lost its warmth.

  “I do not wish to meet him.”

  “But why? We’re practicing the same art, both are styles of bujutsu—in fact both of you learned from the same man.”

  His voice turned cold and I felt I had gone too far in pushing him. “Be satisfied that both styles work equally well. Be aware that ultimately it is not a question of styles of the same art, or even of different arts; it is rather a questio
n of the person. You cannot say, as an example, that Chinese martial arts defeated Japanese methods yesterday. How can one art defeat another? Can you state that painting ‘was defeated’ by flower arranging? It is only the person who can vanquish another.

  “However, if you feel you have anything much to lose by not learning under Tanaka-san, I would be happy to let you go. You are aware that it has never been acceptable to have two sensei for the same thing?”

  I flinched at his curt words; they were like chips of ricocheting granite piercing me. “No, no, sensei. I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression. The thought of leaving your tutelage has never occurred to me.”

  He softened his tone, and that was the closest to an apology I would get from him. “You found the boy Kon formidable, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Yet you managed to control him. Why?”

  I told him what I thought that night after I had met Kon, when I analyzed our encounter—that my mind was stronger and calmer than his. It was what Tanaka had told me as well.

  Endo-san gave a rare, radiant smile. “I see I have not wasted my time with you. Yes, the mind. Once you control the mind, the body becomes helpless. At a higher level, bujutsu is fought by the mind. Remember that. Now you understand my insistence on you practicing meditation. Your mind will save you when your body cannot. I am pleased that you train so much on your own. I value the amount of hard work you have put into yourself. You have realized entirely on your own that if you yourself do not put in the work required—for any endeavor!—who else will do it for you?”

  His words touched me. In all my years my father had never spoken to me this way; no one ever had. Sitting in the seiza position, I bowed deeply, my forehead touching the ground, the lowest anyone could reach, yet I never felt higher in all my life.

  One question remained to me. “If a higher level of bujutsu involves fighting with the mind, what then is the very highest level?”

  He closed his eyes for a while, seeing things he would never show me. “That,” he said, “would be never to fight at all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The situation in Europe was worsening. Hitler had launched his Panzer divisions into Poland, starting the tear that would soon rip the fabric of Europe into rags. I was on Endo-san’s island one evening when he called me into the house. He had tuned in to the BBC Overseas Service and I heard Neville Chamberlain’s voice, given a tone of hollowness by the distance and static, declare that Britain was now at war with Germany.

  “Will your family be safe?” Endo-san asked.

  Alfred Scott’s secretary had given me details of my family’s voyage home a few days after the party at Henry Cross’s house. “They left Southampton two weeks ago,” I answered.

  “The sea lanes will be patrolled by German submarines,” he said.

  I checked the date on his calendar. “They should be halfway home now, well away from Europe.” I tried not to show my concern, but the journey was so long, the distances over unprotected waters so vast. I felt guilty, for they should have been home two months ago, but because I had chosen not to go with them, my father had decided to extend their stay in London, since I would not be missing my new term at school. I reminded myself that I would call Scott to see if he had heard anything further from my father.

  We continued to listen to the news. It was all so far away that I did not think it would affect our lives here at all. The news that came seemed like a serialized story, to be heard or read over breakfast and then forgotten until the next, more terrible, instalment arrived the following morning.

  In spite of the resumption of the school term, Endo-san had intensified my training after he returned from his travels, almost as if he had to conform to some unwritten schedule. He agreed to conduct his lessons later in the evening to accommodate me, but then proceeded to push me to near fury, and there was no one I could talk to except Kon.

  Once I became Kon’s friend I grew aware of the stories surrounding his father, Towkay Yeap. They had been floating in the air for a while, but I had never given much attention to them. Uncle Lim, especially, delighted in gossiping about the alleged leader of the Red Banner Society.

  “You’re like one of the kitchen servants, going on and on like that,” I said to him one day, but still bursting with curiosity to discover more.

  I learned that the Red Banner Society was a triad, a Chinese criminal gang, led by someone they called a Dragon Head. Many of the early migrants from China were members of these organizations, bringing with them the traditions and practices of their triads and, for a payment, helping subsequent fellow migrants stand on their own feet in a new country. The Perak Wars of Malaya of the 1880s had been backed by opposing triads, each out to carve a bigger territory for itself. They earned their revenue from protection fees paid by members, from prostitution and illegal gambling. Many ran their own opium dens and smuggled in the drug as well.

  “Are you a member of any?” I asked Uncle Lim, and he glared at me, offended that I could ask so personal a question.

  “Don’t make Towkay Yeap angry,” he warned me instead. “Some say his power is greater than that of the governor of Singapore.”

  “Is my grandfather in these triads? He is, isn’t he? Is that why you are so loyal to him?”

  But Uncle Lim said he had to search for some parts for the car, and refused to say anything more

  In the little spaces of free time when Endo-san was busy, I became a regular visitor to Kon’s home. The house was in the wealthy Georgetown Chinese area that divided into Pitt Street, Light Street, and China Street. It was located two houses away from La Maison Bleu, the former home of Cheong Fatt Tze, who had been Chinese consul general to Singapore in the service of the Manchu government. His funeral, in 1916, my father once told me, was the largest Penang had seen; even the Dutch and the English governments had ordered flags to be flown at half-mast across their colonies. “That house is where I met your mother, in 1922,” he said to me. “Cheong Fatt Tze’s eldest son continued his father’s tradition of holding his famous parties. And there, one evening, I saw your mother dancing. I walked up to her and she smiled at me, and without a word she left her poor partner standing alone, and danced only with me for the rest of the evening.”

  I watched him smile as he saw my mother again. “Do you know what she did when her heel broke?” he said. “She took off her shoes and threw them into a corner, which created a minor furor among the other women. And then she said, ‘Are you not going to act like a gentleman and take off your shoes as well?’“

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Took off my shoes and danced with her all night until it was time to go home,” he replied, his eyes bright with memory.

  La Maison Bleu, the Manchu’s house, got its name because its walls had been dyed with indigo obtained from India, and that made it easy for me to find Kon’s home just down the road.

  I knocked on the wide wooden doors. A whitewashed wall ran around the property so that I could not see inside. A moment later an old man pushed the doors open with difficulty and I stepped over the low threshold. The doors closed behind me and the sounds of the streets were immediately silenced.

  The house was built in the Chinese style, the edges of the roof pinched upwards. The terra-cotta tiles on the roof were thick with aged mold, the pigeons picking their way jauntily over them. I saw Kon come out on to the balcony on the second floor. I waved to him and he disappeared back inside.

  He met me at the front entrance and led me into the main hall. A large wooden screen, carved with a thousand detailed figures and leafed in gold, barred all outsiders from the house within. Red lanterns hung from the crossbeams of the ceiling and square wooden pedestals inlaid with mother-of-pearl supported vases and jade figurines. The clay tiles felt cold under my bare feet when I removed my shoes. I began to cool down from the heat outside.

  Towkay Yeap, Kon’s father, came out from behind the screen and shook my hand. With his thin, bony face and d
ark, intelligent eyes, he had the appearance of a scholar from Confucian times. I had heard rumors that, like many of the wealthy older Chinese, he was a habitual frequenter of the opium dens in town. Indulgence in the drug often caused the flesh to melt away from the face and stretch the skin tight, and looking at his face now I could almost believe the stories.

  He inquired after my father, and said they had some dealings together. “One of the rare few English Tuan Besars who would openly do business with us,” he said, honoring him with the title of “Big Boss,” the term given by the Malays to great men. “I was at your parents’ wedding.”

  He seemed genial enough, and I wondered if he would be capable of ordering the deaths of his enemies. I shivered when I felt he knew what I was thinking. To unsettle me further he said, “Please convey my regards to your grandfather in Ipoh.”

  I was discovering how small my world was as Towkay Yeap gave me a fathomless smile before he turned away into his study.

  “This is a lovely house,” I said to Kon as we went up a wrought-iron spiral staircase in the cobbled courtyard. I heard the female voices of his household, the amahs chattering in the kitchen, the sound of a steel cleaver on a wooden chopping block as lunch was prepared, and I caught the smell of glutinous rice steaming when a soft wind blew through the house. A dog barked at my presence and a male voice scolded it. “Diamlah!”

  “My father bought this place from Cheong Fatt Tze, who had it built for one of his lesser wives. It’s very much smaller than La Maison Bleu.”

  “How many wives did he have?”

  “Eight official ones.”

  “Lucky number,” I said.

  “For us Chinese, yes. This house has only ten rooms, but Cheong’s had thirty-eight. Apart from that the features and decorations are almost identical. Built by the same team of craftsmen.”