by Tan Twan Eng
I had other problems to occupy my mind, however. Isabel still maintained her refusal to speak to me, even when I handed her the letters from MacAllister and Edward.
“These were given to me by Endo-san today,” I said.
My father opened Edward’s letter and read it quickly. “Nothing much. The censors have blacked out entire lines of writing. He’s well, not in Malaya, but then we knew that.” He gave the letter to me. It was disjointed, abrupt where the sentences had been censored.
“How’s Peter?” he asked Isabel.
“Same news. Not good,” she said. “He’s in Thailand. Look, he writes, ‘Since I Am in Much poor health . . .’“
“Good old Peter,” my father said, a brief smile lightening his face. “Thank Mr. Endo, please.” Isabel folded her letter and I knew she would read it again in her room, savoring every scarce word.
“And put my name down on the list of people who have to come up with the money,” my father added.
“Why?” I could not believe what I was hearing. “That’s only for the Chinese.”
“Before the Japs came, this was a good place, a place where we all worked together, Europeans, Chinese, Malays, and Indians. I will not let the Japanese break us apart. I’ll do my share, even if I’m not a Chinese. If every one of us gives some, the amount can be raised.”
“One of the reasons why I’m working for the Japanese is so that you’ll be exempt from such demands,” I said, my fingers on my temper loosening one by one. “If you want to be a party to such idiocy, what’s the point of my working for them?”
“It only takes one letter of the alphabet to change reason to treason. You went to work for them of your own accord, so don’t ever use us to justify your actions.”
“Don’t you see, this is the only way of seeing that all of us are safe, to see the family firm is safe!”
“No,” my father said.
“The war won’t last,” Isabel said. “The British army will be back.”
I looked at her pityingly. “They’ve gone, Isabel. They left us, undefended, uninformed. They might mount a counterinvasion but in the meantime we have to play by the rules.”
I looked at my father. “You said once that I never considered myself a part of this family. Why do you think I’m doing this now? Do you think I like being thought of as a dog owned by the Japanese? Do you?”
He did not answer. There was no answer. He could only hold Edward’s letter in his hand, his thumb rubbing it back and forth, back and forth.
Once the former home of the resident councillor had been satisfactorily refurbished to suit the Japanese, I was invited to a dinner. My father was silent, his lips clamped into a thin line as he saw me waiting for the chauffeur under the portico.
The former Residence, now the shared headquarters of the Japanese military and civil administrations, appeared unchanged outside except for a row of banners and Japanese flags. What saddened me was the transformation that had been made inside. I had watched the workers remove William Daniell’s oil paintings of scenes of Penang he had executed in the 1880s and replace them with bleak calligraphy scrolls extolling the virtues of the emperor. History had been replaced by propaganda.
I walked around the reception hall and struck up a conversation with the army chief of staff, Colonel Takuma Nishida. In the course of it, I mentioned, “Your plan to land on the northeastern coast of Malaya instead of Singapore was inspired.”
He accepted my flattery with grace. “My men were acclimatized to the heat and humidity in Hainan Island and we had excellent sources of information.”
I gave a gentle stab. “For that you should thank Hayato Endo-san.”
“True. Endo-san selected our landing sites and he advised us to beach in the months between December to February during the monsoon, when the seas would be rough and dangerous. No one would have expected us to launch the attack then.”
I felt nauseous, for I remembered telling Endo-san how once in his youth my father had tried to sail the rough seas off Kota Bahru during the monsoon and had almost been swept away forever. The waves had capsized his boat and he had floated for more than a day before he was found. My grandparents had given him up for dead.
Colonel Nishida sipped his glass of wine and added, “If you ask me, if it had not been for Endo-san, General Yamashita would not have conquered your country with such ease. His reputation as the Tiger of Malaya is in part owed to Endo-san. But that is between us, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
Now I saw that there had been an unspoken exchange between Endo-san and me. I had accepted the bargain: his protection for my knowledge.
For once meditation did not help. I found my mind hopping from thought to thought, like a monkey swinging from tree to tree; the chattering of my mind would not be stilled. Endo-san had understood when I asked him to take me to Hiroshi. I had not been required to explain to him why I wanted to work for him. Some days I felt that was why he had taught me: in return for betraying me, my home, and my way of life, he had provided me with the ability to keep my family and myself safe. For those reasons alone I felt compelled to remain loyal to him and to the lessons he had imparted.
But now and then, like a weakening flame trying to replenish its heat, a feeling of fury would flare up, burn me up completely, and only my disciplined practice of zazen helped me hold on to my respect and love for him.
I knew that there would come a day when even that would fail, and what would happen to us all then?
Chapter Seven
The threats began with the carcass of a slaughtered dog thrown onto the portico steps. Flies had begun clouding it when the maid found it and screamed. We came out from our breakfast and I prodded it with my feet, pushing it to one side to pull out the blood-soaked note.
“‘Jap dogs—Watch Out for Your Lives!’“ I read, and crumpled it. My father and Isabel watched me, silent. “It’s nothing. Just empty words,” I said, forcing my eyes to meet theirs.
“Get rid of the dog,” my father said.
Two nights later he shook me awake. “What is it?” I asked. “What time is it?”
“The house is on fire.”
I ran after him down to the drawing room, where, in a corner near the windows, hungry crackling flames were reaching for the shelves and the curtains. We doused the fire with water from the kitchen.
“No need to wake the rest now,” he said. He pointed to the window; pieces of glass lay on the floor like ice in the moonlight.
“I found this,” he took out a piece of paper from the pocket of his dressing gown. “‘We’ll get you.’“
“Keep it,” my father said. “And do something. You’ve no right to place all our lives in peril.”
When morning came, I had made up my mind. I knocked on the door to Hiroshi’s office. “I wish to resign from my position here.”
He looked up from his desk and I covered my shock at how thin he had become. Of late he had taken to leaving early during lengthy meetings, sometimes avoiding them altogether. But he was always aware of the things discussed in those meetings.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’ve been receiving death threats. My family’s lives have been threatened.”
“All of us receive threats. That does not mean we should give in to them.” He got up and called Endo-san in. “Our young friend here wishes to discontinue his services to our emperor.”
“Also, I do not agree with your policies, or your actions so far,” I said. “It was not necessary to execute looters. It was not necessary to round up the Chinese and send them to your labor camps.”
“Those people were acting against our government, plotting to resist us. They had to be put down. It is always the case, in a period of transition when one authority replaces another, that pockets of resistance appear. Our methods may appear brutal to your young mind, but they are necessary,” Hiroshi said.
“I have given you a lot of assistance. All I am requesting is that you release me fr
om service.”
Hiroshi took off his glasses and commenced polishing them. “Your family is safe now, even though the Kempeitai inform us that your sister has been spreading inflammatory words among the people of Penang. You are the most famous collaborator on this island. Do you think we will let you leave so easily? It would reflect badly on us. And we will make your life hard. No one would disbelieve us if we let it be known that you personally identified many of the people we have executed. No one at all.”
His cold, precise words cut me like the samurai sword resting on a sideboard behind him. I glanced at Endo-san, and he nodded.
I knew when I was defeated. I gave a brief shallow bow and left, almost feeling the smile on Hiroshi’s face on my back.
There was only one person I could go to. I headed to a stall at the Pulau Tikus market, where a bucktoothed youth was selling a meager selection of bananas. Food was in short supply and people had resorted to eating broth and harvesting their sweet potatoes and yams. Many had run off to the jungles of Pulau Tikus to avoid the Japanese. The town was quite empty except for a few who had nowhere else to escape to. I brought out a Japanese fifty-dollar note and bought two bananas: buying bananas with banana notes—the sad irony did not escape me.
“I have to see Towkay Yeap today,” I said to the youth. “Tell him my name.” I whispered it to him; he appeared not to have heard me. “Arrange for a safe place to meet.” He ignored me until I laced my fingers together, my thumb pointing outward, my little fingers down, creating the sign of the Dragon Head as Kon had shown me once, a long, long time ago.
The youth sucked his teeth, blew out his breath, eyed me with new respect, and nodded.
On my way home from work I became aware of two men flanking me on bicycles. I slowed down and let them catch up with me. I heard them approach and tensed, wondering if the people sending threats to me were about to keep their word.
“Your request has been heard. Be at the docks on Sunday morning.” And then they cycled away, talking to each other as they went.
They took me out on a sampan, the boat as flat as a saucer beneath our weight, the water trying to pour in as we were rowed out on a sea of heaving emerald, the white tops like cream. I could see the blue-violet mountains of Kedah, a thick wet line that washed down into emptiness. We transferred to a filthy trawler reeking of fish guts. On the slimy deck I faced Kon’s father. Around us, standing at different parts of the deck, the foot soldiers of the Red Banner Society waited, ready to defend their leader if I made even the slightest move.
“If you needed to see me, you could have just come to my home,” he said.
“It was not safe.” I outlined my predicament swiftly. “I have a proposition for you. While I work for the Japanese, whatever information I obtain I will pass on to you.” From the papers that went through my hands I knew the triads already had the structure and organization to resist the Japanese. They had carried out a few bombings, striking at Japanese ammunition depots, and the Kempeitai were building their files on the triads.
“How can we trust you? You, so well known for helping the Japanese?”
“My family’s life. My life. You know where we are. If I betray you, I know we would have nowhere to run. Your son would vouch for me.”
He kept silent, looking out to sea, his robe fluttering in the wind. He seemed to have aged a great deal since the last time I saw him. There was a frailty in him, common in much older men, which I had never seen before. It was a form of fading away, as though he had fewer and fewer elements within him for the light to catch and reflect into my vision. I had heard from the Japanese informers that he was still continuing his visits to the opium dens.
“I do not want my family harmed in any way. I want to make it clear to you that I cannot stop working for the Japanese. They have made threats of harm and imprisonment against my family. I also ask that you put the word out to the resistance that the threats to my family and me are to cease.”
He nodded in agreement. “Very well. We will order the warnings to stop.”
“I’ll do my part,” I assured him.
“You are too young to be doing this,” he said.
“The war does not choose its victims. Kon is doing his part too.”
“Yes, he is,” the old man said, a sad and distant gaze coming into his eyes. He missed his son so much.
“Have you news of him?”
He seemed unwilling to tell me, wondering if he could trust me. “For myself, I would prefer not to disclose my son’s location,” he said. “Before he left, however, he insisted I should let you know. He is in a camp just outside Ipoh. The guerrillas have joined forces with the Malayan Communist Party. His group has been successful in disrupting the Jipunakui activities.” He shook his head. “I hope they do not become too successful, for that is when the Jipunakui will really hunt them down.”
He walked to the side of the trawler, the water churned to a milky white by the prow. “Please thank your father for his contribution to the fund ordered by the Jipunakui,” he said. “I know he did not want it made public.”
“I was against him paying it,” I admitted.
“The fact that he paid is one of the reasons why the threats against you and your family were never seriously carried out. Your father, at least, is a true son of the island.”
He beckoned to me to join him at the railing. We gazed down into the water and I pulled back almost involuntarily. The sea was a translucent and enticing green but floating just below the surface was an armada of pale, transparent jellyfish, many of them the size of a small opened umbrella and trailing tentacles almost ten feet long. They appeared at certain times of the month and were one of the hazards of swimming in the waters around the island. I had encountered them many times before, but not in such number—there must have been close to a thousand of them around us. I watched their heads pulsate as they drifted with the currents, remembering the time when I had been stung in my leg while swimming. The pain had been excruciating and I had barely made it back to shore.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Towkay Yeap said. “A man could survive a sting from one of these but he would never make it through all of them if he fell in.”
“There’s no reason for anyone to fall in,” I said, meeting his eyes.
“Let us hope so,” he replied.
I rowed to Endo-san’s island beneath the fading sun and the multiplying stars, enjoying the pull and yield of the oars. For once the trip felt unending, as though I were rowing in a viscous dream, all movement slowed. Part of me realized I had entered the deepest state of zazen and that I was not holding the oars anymore.
I was kneeling in a field, a field so green, so new with rain that the grass gave off an emerald luminescence. A slight wind bent the tops of the trees, lifting the scent from them, sending it to me. I knew the sea was within reach, for its gentle promise floated on the scent of the trees. And above me I could almost hear the scraping of the clouds’ slow movement against the sky. The light was unnaturally bright and the contrasts sharp. A shadow moved into the sun and I lifted my head to look into Endo-san’s face. My breathing was stilled, for his face was suffused with both love and sorrow, mingling like the wind and the rain. He was attired in a formal black men-tsuke robe, its sleeves and edges lined with a discreet border of muted gold. On his shoulders were his crests and I knew he was one of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu’s daimyo, a warlord. His hair was white, pulled back into a samurai topknot, and his arms held a katana so beautiful it seemed to be alive.
He raised it up in the happo stance, both hands going to his right shoulder, his legs bent outward at the knees. A crowd had gathered around the field and banners whipped frantically on the wind: their fluttering sounded like the beating wings of cranes about to take flight to a far-off summer.
He spoke and his voice carried across the field. “For conspiring against Tokugawa-Shogun, you have been sentenced to death. You have been denied the right to seppukku. Your family have had their title
s and properties confiscated and all have been executed.”
But his eyes, oh his eyes! They spoke of other things, of things that had been between us, and things that could now never be. His mouth tightened into a firm, remorseless line, hard as the blade of the sword he now gripped high over his head. But in the depths of his tear-filled eyes I saw his love for me.
I raised my neck, exposing it to the arc of his cut. And then I gathered my trembling voice so I could speak clearly and firmly:
Friends part forever
Wild geese lost in clouds.
It was from a haiku by Matsuo Basho, his favorite poet.
I felt him breathe and then his katana seemed to trap a ray of the sun within the blade as it sliced down, and the next moment I was above the field, this timeless field. I saw my body as it collapsed slowly into a curled position and Endo-san crouching over it. Even through the veil that separates life from death I could feel his sorrow. I wanted to console him, to tell him not to feel such sadness, but it was beyond my strength now to reach him.
I sat back in the boat; my hands clenched the oars and a film of sweat chilled my face. I was on the beach of Endo-san’s island, unaware of how I had gotten there, every segment of my body shaking as though trying to tear apart from one another. My neck burned with remembered pain and I choked as I tried to breathe. I opened my eyes and saw him standing beside me, concerned. His hand reached out and gently stroked a line down the side of my neck where in the seventeenth century he had cut me. The skin convulsed when his fingers touched it. Silence, only the sound of the waves and the creak of the boat.
“Are you feeling ill?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, the word riding on my long exhalation. I knew then, though I found it difficult to accept, that there was more to life than this life. That in all our incarnations I had loved him, and that that love had brought me pain and death: time after time; life after life.