The Gift of Rain: A Novel

by Tan Twan Eng

  Some days I shake my head when I think how many architects and consultants have resigned while working for the Trust. But Penelope Cheah, in addition to her architectural qualifications, had a love for the old colonial buildings of Penang. We shared that love, and it sustained her whenever I was impatient, demanding, and unreasonable.

  Adele now showed her into my office, and her smile was as usual cheerful and indefatigable. She alone had lasted longer than any of the other architects.

  “How’s progress?” I asked.

  “It’s almost complete. And it’ll be the best restoration ever undertaken by the Trust. There’s talk that UNESCO may give us the top award for heritage conservation.”

  “That’s wonderful. It’ll also be the last restoration I’ll ever do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m growing old, and tired. I wanted to stop a long time ago, but this one—this one has special memories.”

  “You’ve done so much to conserve the history of this island. It would be a terrible shame to stop,” she said.

  “Lately I’ve been wondering, how much can one hold on to history?” I said. “I’ve been trying to stop time from going forward and perhaps that’s misguided and foolish.”

  “Do you remember the first few times we went inside the house after you bought it?” she asked, her attempt to pull me away from my melancholic mood obvious.

  “Yes. It was awful,” I answered, humoring her and touched by her concern.

  A week after the paperwork for the sale was completed I went and stood outside the wooden gates of Towkay Yeap’s home. It was as though the years had never come and gone. The light was the same and, as I reached out my hand to touch the square wooden knob, I heard the cries of a hawker and the tok tok sound as he knocked on wooden clappers while pedaling his pushcart past the house, selling wonton noodles. The hawker went past me and his sounds faded away.

  I went into the garden and, although I had seen many derelict homes, its neglected—no, abused—state shocked me. The roof was half gone and pieces of tile, broken into shards like the eggshells of a mythical bird, littered the bare, sandy lawn. The rosewood doors had been removed, used as firewood by squatters, and the Art Deco stained-glass windows were shattered.

  It was worse inside. Where the beautiful gold-leafed screen had not been axed, smoke from the squatters’ cooking fires had destroyed it. The fittings were all gone and only nubs of them remained embedded in the walls, buds doomed never to bloom.

  I shook my head now as I recalled that day. Penelope smiled in shared memory. “It looks different now,” she said, unable to subdue the pride in her voice.

  “I’d like to show it to a friend of mine. When can you have it ready?”

  “End of this week?”

  “That’s a good time,” I said. Adele came in and reminded me of my interview with a journalist from the local newspaper. I had been reluctant to grant it, but the editor had been interested in doing an article on the Hutton Heritage Trust.

  “Don’t go yet,” I said to Penelope. “You’re part of this as well.”

  The journalist was a young and courteous Chinese man and we talked for a while of the preservation of history and the collective memory of the island. But I realized he had another reason for the interview as its direction changed.

  “This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Japanese Occupation,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “How would you justify the role you played in the Occupation?”

  “That’s all in the past,” I said.

  “Is it? Among some people you are known as a war criminal who somehow managed to escape justice. Is that perception true?”

  Penelope protested. “That has nothing to do with the Trust.”

  I silenced her with a look. I rode on my anger for a while, knowing how formidable I could appear when I wanted to, and then let it burn away. “How old are you?”

  He had been expecting an attack from me, and he looked wary. “Thirty-four.”

  “Then you weren’t there. You didn’t know. And it never affected you directly. Get your facts right first.”

  “The problem, Mr. Hutton, is that in your case there are just too many facts. All of them conflicting.”

  “Therein lies the truth you seek,” I said, seeing him appear even more confused. I stood up. “You must leave, now. Please.”

  At the door the young journalist stopped. “I’m sorry, sir. I was instructed by my editor to ask those questions.”

  I sympathized with him. The editor, a woman my age, had suffered immensely under the Japanese during those years and she had always hated my role in the war. She had accused me of standing by and watching when her grandfather was attacked and murdered, while I was requisitioning a piano from their home.

  The journalist held out his hand. “My father’s bedridden now and his end is near. But when he heard I was going to meet you, he begged me to convey his gratitude to you for saving his life and my mother’s from the Japanese death squads.”

  “What were their names?”

  He told me, but I said, “I don’t remember them. I’m sorry.” I took his hand in mine, as though trying to establish through him a link to his parents.

  “It doesn’t matter. There were so many. And you were wrong. I was directly affected. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here talking to you today.”

  I gripped his hand harder. “Who’s to know what might have been? But tell your editor—tell her that if I were a war criminal, as you have said, then I never escaped. I’ve been here, all my life. I never ran.”

  I returned to Istana late in the evening. I entered the kitchen and found Michiko bent over the sink, her hands clamped to its edge, the veins in her wrists screaming to escape her skin. I dropped my briefcase on the floor and held her as she tried to bring her coughing under control. The white porcelain sink was speckled with blood, as were the sides of her mouth. Her face was white and she looked like a demented kabuki actor, lips smeared with vermilion paint.

  I sat her down and wiped the blood from her face, and then I gave her a glass of water. She did not drink it, but placed it on the table. Silently I washed the sink before Maria saw it; Maria, like so many of us who grew up during the Japanese Occupation, hated the sight of blood.

  “You were there, when they dropped the bomb,” I said.

  “Yes,” she whispered, breathing hard.

  I gave her the pills she needed. “Already I can feel these losing the fight. They will let me down soon,” she said.

  “Drink the water. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Thank you, Philip-san,” she said, her voice weak.

  We went out to what had by now become our place, on the terrace, where for a few hours each night I could distract her from her own pain by revealing mine. Although I had been uncertain initially, I found that these moments spent with Michiko had not been as difficult as I had feared. It was painful, yes, but in recalling the days of my childhood for her and the events that had compelled me to take the steps from boy to man, I felt myself throwing off the ballast of age, rising and breaking free from the lashings of time, so that I could look down, look back, and marvel at the path my life had taken.

  We had shared something special that night at the river; I felt as though the fireflies had brought their illumination into a part of my life that had always been kept submerged in the dark. The journalist’s questions that day had been far from impertinent. Perhaps I could have tried harder to explain, to recount what I had experienced in the war. But the pain had been too vivid, the feeling of guilt too overpowering. And there was pride as well. My English and Chinese upbringing had ensured—commanded— that I keep my feelings in check so as not to cause awkwardness and embarrassment and bring shame to myself and my family’s reputation. I found it ironic that the two streams of my blood, from opposing points of the compass, had flowed into an unlikely confluence that drowned my ability to express my feelings.

 
Now, to be able to divulge it all to an unacquainted woman who had arrived unexpectedly at my home gave me a feeling of release, of having made it to dry land again. The sensation was, admittedly, also tempered by apprehension.

  What had made me overcome my fear was the awareness that Michiko was not weighed down by the history of my island home and its people and their presumed knowledge of my life. I knew then that I would push myself to reveal everything to her, however difficult it would become. There would often be times during the hours we spent together when I would be tempted to change the truth, to soften it and make myself stand in a better light. But what would be the point of that, at our age?

  Michiko had appeared unannounced, but she was not a stranger. She had known Endo-san, and perhaps in my story she could still recognize why, after all this time, he remained alive in our thoughts.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I started working at Hutton & Sons in the beginning of 1940, following my father around and learning the business. For the first time in my life I truly came to know him. He was a tough and sharp negotiator, but flexible in his approach where it mattered: he was at ease with the unwritten customs and rules of the Malay traders and he was adept at conducting business with the Chinese. He knew when to push them and when, for the sake of face, to let them win, thereby ensuring a bigger victory for all parties involved.

  I had to curtail my visits to Endo-san because my father expected me to follow his hours. He placed me in my own office, a small room for which nobody had found any use. The staff called me Tuan Kechil, the Little Boss, and the Sikh guard saluted us each morning as we passed through the glass and wooden doors of the entrance.

  It was a strange moment for me when I first stepped inside the building. When I was young I had sometimes visited my father in his office to play at his desk, but it was different now. That first day I felt I was being connected with a tradition; I felt I was taking my place among those who had come to Penang a century ago. The checkered black and white marble floor of the lobby, the slowly revolving fans, the large round pillars, and the quiet broken only by the sound of typewriters and telephones all affected me, and I could comprehend why my father had made this his sanctuary.

  He voiced the emotions I was experiencing when he said, “You can feel time here, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” I replied. He reached out and made an abrupt adjustment to my collar, straightening my tie. “Well, come on. Let’s go and make more money today,” he said.

  “Spoken like a true Chinese,” I remarked, and he grinned.

  I learned in great detail about the range of trade in which we had our fingers. We owned three million hectares of rubber plantations across Malaya, four tin mines in Perak and Selangor, sawmills, pepper plantations, a steamer line, orchards, and other properties. My father seemed to be continually on the telephone, and Mrs. Teoh, his efficient Chinese secretary, was on her feet the entire day, running between the various rooms searching for files. I assisted by reading the reports and then summarizing them for Mr. Scott and my father, and checking the paperwork that was required for our exports, which all went to England.

  Occasionally I would be sent to the godowns on Weld Quay to check on the coolies or to supervise the unloading of goods. These godowns—rows of large stores and warehouses fronting the harbor—were dark and hot, most of them piled high to their corrugated tin roofs with sacks of pepper and chillies, cloves, cinnamon sticks, or star anise. These I found tolerable, but I hated entering those that stored sheets of smoked rubber. The stench would adhere to my clothing and hair. I would return from these visits with my shirt clinging to my body and my tie undone, to gulp down the pot of tea Mrs. Teoh always made for me.

  I soon had to visit the harbor daily, for the Malayan Communist Party was talking the Indian coolies into laying down their sweat-towels and going on a nationwide strike.

  One morning my father called me into his room. The manager, Mr. Chin, had telephoned him minutes earlier in near panic, his voice so loud I could hear him through the receiver. “The bloody Reds are causing trouble again. What should I do?”

  “I thought the government had banned the Party?” I asked my father.

  “That wouldn’t stop them harassing our workers,” he said, as he put on his jacket and we prepared to visit the godowns.

  A crowd was already forming when we crossed Beach Street to get to the harbor. My father let out a curse. “Bastards!” he said. An Indian man stood on a wooden crate, shouting anti-British slogans. He saw us and raised his voice, “Here come the people who oppress you, work you like slaves and pay you wages that wouldn’t even feed a dog!”

  A group of Chinese men stood next to him, dressed neatly and saying nothing. “They’re from the MCP,” my father whispered to me. Some of our workers had already crossed the line, shouting along with the speaker, but when they saw Noel Hutton their voices lowered and faded away. In the silence the Indian’s voice sounded even more strident. He shook his fist. “Why are you afraid? Why are you shaking like weaklings?”

  My father walked to the center of the crowd, which opened for him. “Anyone who wants to go with these troublemakers is free to do so,” he said in Malay, which the workers used. “Just don’t come in to work tomorrow.” He repeated his words in Hokkien and turned in a circle, looking into the eyes of each worker. “Those who have decided to throw in their lot with this monkey, get off my property now. Your names will be circulated and I will make sure no one else hires you.” There was an angry wail from the workers.

  A Chinese coolie picked up one of the curved iron crowbars the workers used to lift gunnysacks from wooden pallets. He came in at a run. My father stood, unafraid. I was about to move and push him away but as the coolie swung his crowbar my father jabbed a punch into his face, breaking his nose with a crack. The coolie fell to his knees, his hands covering his shattered nose and the crowbar clattered to the ground. Shouts erupted from the workers as they surged and moved to help the fallen coolie.

  Another dockworker came in swinging a chain, moving deliberately around my father.

  “Let me handle this,” I said to him, expecting him to tell me to keep quiet and stand aside.

  To my surprise he said, “He’s yours,” and retreated.

  I moved closer and the workers started chanting, their bodies moving in time to their voices. The coolie was a muscular, broad-shouldered man, strengthened by his brutal work, still wearing a vestige of the pigtail they had cut off years ago when the Manchu had been driven from the Dragon Throne in China. I had seen such men lift and carry a hundred pounds of rice on their shoulders, all the while swearing and laughing and singing the bawdy folk songs of their villages.

  He started to swing the chain faster and I kept my patience, waiting for the right moment. I refused to make the first move, for he could have snapped the chain like a well-used whip and taken one side of my face off.

  He flicked his wrist and the tip of the chain shot out, but I angled my body and avoided it easily. He pulled it back into the swinging movement, which became faster still, the chain singing as it made an infinite figure of eight in the air. The coolie raised his hand back to slash me and I stepped in and extended my hands into his backward swing, putting him off balance. My hands coiled up his arms and caught the chain and, as he stumbled, I wrapped his wrists in a lock. Everyone heard the crunch as I broke the bones of his wrist. The coolie let out an agonized scream and went down on one knee, clutching his hand like a shot animal. I spun around on my heel in a tight circle and kicked him across the jaw. The crack as it shattered was louder than the sound of his wrist breaking.

  The workers and the MCP members stared in shock, but not for long. They ran off into the side streets and back lanes surrounding the warehouses when the police arrived.

  My father came to me and held my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. I had felt completely calm when the attack was taking place and was now disconcerted to find that I was shakin
g. A muscle in my calf began to twitch in a reaction to what had occurred. I took a few deep breaths, pulling them into the depths of my stomach and soon felt myself regaining a certainty about the world. It was the first time in my life that I had injured another man, and I felt guilty but also elated.

  It was difficult to take in the image of my father breaking the coolie’s nose. I suppose children never expect to see their parents punch someone, much less break a nose. And I could say the same of him, that he never expected to see a son of his do what I had done. There was a stillness in his eyes as he contemplated me. “Mr. Endo’s teachings?” he asked.

  I nodded and he shook his head.

  “What was all that?” I asked him in return, my hands moving in a boxer’s jab.

  “Oh, that?” he said. “Oxford Boxing Cuppers, 1911: I fought at welterweight for Trinity.” I laughed as the tension of the fight broke over me. I gave him a hurried embrace, surprising both of us.

  I was disconcerted at how quickly the months passed as 1940 wound its way to a close and a new year began. Despite the worsening war in Europe and China, we were kept busy. There was so much to learn at the office and my father was a hard taskmaster, often keeping very long hours, to which he expected me to adhere as well. Although he seemed to have accepted my lessons with Endo-san, I could still see the quick grimace of aggravation on his face if I had to leave the office before he had finished with me for the day.

  Endo-san too was suddenly overwhelmed with work; his absences from Penang increased and it was difficult for us to keep to a schedule of lessons, so he was often greatly displeased when I was even slightly late.

  I knew Noel was using the excuse of work to make me miss my classes and one afternoon I went into his office and sat down in front of him.