The Gift of Rain: A Novel

by Tan Twan Eng

  “Now what has Fujihara-san been telling you, hm? I am here to catch a tiger.” He recovered from his disappointment and laughed. “Come, let us go before we are drenched. How I loathe this country and its endless seasons of rain.”

  The briefing was held in the main meeting room, which was furnished only with an ikebana flower arrangement created by Hiroshi. It was a lush, almost monstrous design, unlike the spare, stark forms that Saotome favored. All the flowers were indigenous to Malaya and the combination of hibiscus and ferns and orchids was quite unrefined.

  Hiroshi was rearranging it with great fuss when we entered, his coughs shaking his entire body. They racked him frequently: only a few of us had been informed that he was afflicted with tuberculosis, but there would have been talk among the staff as well, of that I was certain. He had lost so much weight we could almost see how his ribs rattled when he coughed. There were days when he could not get out of bed and Endo-san had taken over the majority of his responsibilities.

  Saotome sat down and said, “Hiroshi-san, please excuse us. I do not wish to breathe your air.”

  There was a long silence, Fujihara not even bothering to hide his amusement. I looked down onto the table, feeling embarrassed for Hiroshi. Such a public humiliation was quite unwarranted. He pushed back his chair, arranged his notes on the table, bowed, and closed the door after he left.

  “Good,” Saotome said. “We are here today to shut down the activities of a group of irritants once and for all. The group calls itself the White Tiger and it is one of the cell organizations of Force 136 and the MPAJA which has been inflicting serious damage on us. I have reports confirming it was responsible for the loss of our radar station here. We have a well-placed source within it.”

  Saotome passed a brown file around to Endo-san and Fujihara. He waved for me to leave them. “I’ve always attended the meetings,” I protested. I had to find out more, find out what they had in mind for my friend Kon.

  “Not today,” Saotome said.

  I closed the door behind me, passing Goro, who was standing outside the room. I walked down the corridor, sat in my office and began to think calmly. In the next room I heard Hiroshi coughing wetly and I decided to see if he was feeling all right. As I placed my hand on the slightly open door of his room I paused, wondering if I was hearing voices. I was confused, for Saotome’s voice seemed to come from behind Hiroshi’s door. I could hear, though with some difficulty, Saotome say: . . . act as the bait, and our man will let them know that the second highest ranking Japanese is passing through their territory. Once they attempt to capture me our troops will come out and seize them. We will cut them open and hang them in the Padang in Kuala Lumpur, make them an example to the other groups who dare fight us. That will show them we intend to remain masters of this country, however much we are losing battles. I want that White Tiger’s head.

  I heard Fujihara laugh, and from behind the door a cough rippled through Hiroshi. I realized this was how he kept his finger on the affairs of his staff. Cunning little bastard, to place a microphone in the meeting room. I smiled when I realized the device had been hidden in the ikebana.

  The past days had been typical of the monsoon weather, balmy days turning to heavy rains in the early afternoon. It was sticky and hot. I left work early before they came out from the meeting, so as to avoid the rain. My mind was in turmoil as I cycled out of the army headquarters, past the saluting sentries. How to warn Kon’s team that it was about to be ambushed? And who was the man working for the Japanese in their group?

  I cycled into town and parked my bicycle near the steps of Empire Trading. The windows of Hutton & Sons were shuttered and the office had been closed until my father could return. The staff would be waiting for him, for without his presence throughout the Occupation the Japanese would have sent them to the prison camps. Walking across the back lanes I made a few evasive turns. I stopped at a battered shophouse and knocked rapidly on the door. After a few long minutes it was opened and I was ushered into the gloomy interior. I was immediately lifted by the fragrance of burning opium, sweet and cloying, the scent of too-ripe fruit. I felt giddy, and had to take a few deep, deliberate breaths. A harridan led me up a flight of creaky stairs, past yellowing calendars showing girls in cheongsam selling beer and whiskey, their tight dresses slit up to their hips. I came to a landing divided into separate cubicles by wooden screens. A shaft of sunlight sprayed in from a cracked shutter. Outside, the flutter of pigeons on the gutters added to the oppressive silence within. The sound of breaths, inhalations and drawn out exhalations, were like spectral whispers, as though the walls were murmuring to each other across the space. Dark figures lying on wooden divans shifted as smoke curled up from their pipes. Soft moans and softer cries floated from them. All the normal sounds of an opium den, I supposed. I tried to shut them out.

  Towkay Yeap lay on an opium bed facing me, a look of repose on his face as his cheeks collapsed to haul in another drug-saturated breath. A young girl, no more than twelve, tiny-waisted and looking ancient in her face paint, knelt before him, rolling pinches of the dark, sticky opium into balls. As he finished the pipe she took it from him and lit another opium ball, her movement expert and her face quite bored. The air burned with the heated opium as she passed the pipe back to him. His wisps of hair trembled slightly as the fans above us spun lazily, too slow to cool the air. They seemed to turn without purpose, like flowers spinning on the wind.

  He offered me the pipe, but I declined. He gave me an evil, contented smile. “What news do you have for me today?”

  “Your son will soon die,” I said softly.

  I thought he had not heard, for he seemed preoccupied with his ivory pipe. He opened his eyes again as I started to speak. “My son is invincible.”

  I gave a snort. “You’ve been at the pipe for far too long.”

  He eyed me lazily. Putting aside his pipe he swung off the bed and led me into a room further into the darkness. He closed the door behind us and sat down. “You have not lied to me yet,” he said. “How is my son in danger?”

  Swiftly I told him of the ambush and the hidden soldiers. “You have to send some of your people in to warn them,” I said.

  “My men . . . what remain of them . . . they are all old men now . . . the young have died, or have joined rival triads. They have left me, they say I am weak, and useless. As you can see ...”

  “It’s your son, Towkay Yeap,” I said, impatient. He was as lost as wind-spiraled leaves and I feared he would not last out the war.

  He put his arms on my shoulders. “Then I have a favor to ask of you.”

  I knew what he wanted, but I shook my head. “No. I cannot save him. I have neither the skills nor the abilities. Once the Japanese discover I’m gone, what do you think will happen to my family?”

  “I will find you a guide. Someone from the jungle tribes, perhaps.”

  “No.”

  I got up to leave but he said, “You are his friend. You have no choice. No one else can do it.”

  I sat next to Endo-san on a stone bench on the North Coastal Road while he worked through a bundle of documents from his office. The atmosphere in the administrative headquarters had been oppressive and I was glad to accompany him here when he asked me.

  I considered the problems of a rescue attempt on Kon. I was not trained to fight in the jungle, although I knew that what I had been taught by Endo-san would stand me in good stead. But if I disappeared completely for weeks what would happen to my father? Should I fail, I too would have to take to the jungle and that certainly did not appeal to me.

  The sea had almost been drained by the tide and flocks of seagulls and crows flapped down to the mud, searching for clams and mussels and sea snails. Men and women in rubber boots up to their knees and with rattan baskets on their arms sank with each step into the mud as, with similar intent, they joined the birds. Clouds began piling up, high and unconquerable, like medieval towers and bastions.

  “You seem preoccupied,
” Endo-san said.

  “Just thinking of my life since you appeared.”

  “Has it been a good one?”

  “Yes. Some days, yes,” I said softly, my hand reaching out to touch his palm when he put aside his documents. “Other days, not so good.”

  “Look,” he said. Across the channel in Butterworth the rain had begun, rubbing out the coastline like a dissatisfied artist. We watched as the waterless bed of the sea became spotted with a million drops of rain.

  “We should go,” he said, rising to his feet. “We will get wet.”

  “No.” I held his arm and he sat down again. We opened our umbrellas as the rain came, sheets of it, as steady as glass yet as giving as strips of cloth. The men and women on the muddy beach were lost to us and the birds took flight while, behind us, the hawkers shouted out warnings and closed their stalls. The heat faded perceptibly, chased off by the wind. The rain fell on us, around us, dripping down our umbrellas onto our laps and thighs. For those few minutes we were surrounded by water and he and I were the only people in the world.

  “What would you do, if you had a friend in danger?” he asked and the question sent my heart drumming.

  “It would depend on the strength of the friendship, but if the bonds were strong, that friend must be saved,” I replied, wondering what he was trying to tell me.

  “Regardless of the danger?”

  “Yes, regardless. Isn’t that what your sensei Ueshiba would have said?”

  “Hai,” he replied.

  Through it all we never looked at each other. We sat in a companionable silence, finding a rare moment when we could just enjoy each other’s presence as though all the war years had been wiped away by the falling rain and we were again merely a master and his pupil, and nothing more.

  And then, just as swiftly as it came, the afternoon shower moved inland and it was over. People came running out from beneath the shelters of the shops and the water streamed off the pavements into the monsoon drains, the roads giving off steam.

  In that brief period of beauty and love, of water and silence, in that moment as we waited there on the bench, shielded from the world by the palace of the rain, I finally found a sense of purpose. I made up my mind to warn Kon. I decided that I would no longer hide under the protection of Endo-san but play my part as Isabel had done. The time had come when I had to do what was right and I would not allow myself to be deceived again by fear, by confusion, or even by love. I saw then that, for me, the teachings of Endo-san, his belief in the universal forces of harmony and balance, these had failed. I had to stop believing in them now and as soon as I came to that decision I saw the simplicity of it all. It was as though the heavy rain had washed my mind clean and left behind a new certainty.

  I realized this would mean the end of what Endo-san and I had shared, for with the abandonment of the principles that had governed his life I was betraying him and everything that he had tried to teach me. And if I were captured there would be nothing he could do for me. Nothing at all. But I had to cut us free from the eternal knot in which we had been entangled; that was the only way forward.

  Were those droplets of rain that strayed from my eyes, or were they the tears of an adult relinquishment of something that had become so essential in my life? I truly did not wish to know.

  Endo-san got up from his seat and said without looking at me, “You should stay here for a while longer. I have to go back to work.”

  The unusual tone in his voice made me agree. I leaned back and watched him walk away to his waiting car, watching until he was driven away.

  I looked down at the bench and saw the brown file he had left behind, spotted with raindrops, looking like the hide of an animal. I glanced around behind me and, after making sure no one was interested in me, I opened it. He had removed most of the documents, for it was much thinner than the one Saotome had handed out in their meeting.

  I read through the few pieces of paper. All had been pressed with the red seal of Saotome, like welts on skin. They confirmed what I had heard outside Hiroshi’s office but they told me more.

  Fearing that Kon would not take the bait, Saotome had also captured Kon’s sensei, Tanaka. The convoy carrying Saotome back to Kuala Lumpur would also be carrying Tanaka to his execution for not reporting to them when they took over the country, and for working against the Japanese. It was a baseless charge, trumped up by Saotome, serving only to lure Kon out into the open to rescue his sensei—Tanaka, who had traveled so far from Japan because someone had asked him to look after Endo-san and because once, in their childhood, they had been friends.

  That evening I took my boat out onto the ocean, watching the fishermen’s lights on their trawlers as they went out to sea. I let my thoughts drift like the nets they cast out, dragging in whatever was in their way.

  I thought of my two brothers and of Isabel and knew that Edward’s suffering in the camps and William’s and Isabel’s deaths were in some way due to me and my association with the Japanese. I considered whether things would have been different had I not met Endo-san but I could find no answers there.

  The events of the past weeks, against which I thought I had constructed an unbreakable barrier, now found their way in. I was exhausted and I knew it was time to stop fighting and so I surrendered myself fully to sorrow. At that moment I saw with perfect clarity what my future would hold for me, that however many lives I had saved and however hard I tried to redeem myself in the time to come, it would never be sufficient to restore my peace of mind. Isabel had spoken the truth: I would never be able to forget.

  I spent that night on the beach on Endo-san’s island, unable to go in and face him. The house was silent when I entered at dawn. I called out his name but he had already left in his own boat. I felt a keen sense of loss but I pushed it aside. I rolled up my futon mattress which had not been slept on and placed it back in the cupboard. I looked around the house after packing all my clothes. The Nagamitsu sword Endo-san had given me was missing, but his own sword resting on its stand halted me. I looked at it, wondering how a work of such beauty could also bring about death so efficiently.

  I walked quickly to the beach and got into my boat. The sun had risen from the sea to be absorbed into the heavy clouds that hung unmoving in the sky. The sea was unfriendly, drowning whatever faint light was shed onto its surface.

  When I neared the shore I pointed the bow to Istana and allowed the waves and the will of the ocean to guide me home. I looked back at Endo-san’s island as I was taken farther away and I wondered if I would ever return to it again.

  The boat sawed into the sand just a footstep away from where Isabel had fallen. I stopped there and said a quiet prayer for her. I looked up to the tree and saw my father against it, the tree and its planter. I went up the narrow steps and approached him, not bothering to conceal my shock. He looked so much older, his hair lifeless as discarded threads, his eyes a vortex surrounded by lines, sinking into his skull. My entire resolve seemed to collapse and I had to gather it whole again with an effort.

  “I have to go away for a while,” I said. “To see Grandfather— and to set things right.”

  “I know. Sooner or later everyone has to do that,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

  I told him I did not understand what he was trying to tell me.

  “I promised to take you to the river, where your mother and I found the fireflies. And I never did.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We can go after the war and you can show me then,” I said. “But now you must come with me. I can find a safe place for you to hide.”

  He shook his head. “Do what must be done and come back. I’ll be here, waiting for you. And together we’ll go to the river.”

  He bent down and I saw he had the cases of his butterfly collection, stacked on top of each other, all badly broken and cracked by Fujihara’s men. He had cleared away the broken glass covers and now scooped out a handful of desiccated wings.

  “Time I set them free,” he said. He w
aited, studying the tops of the trees for the passage of wind. At the moment he judged correct he flung his arm out and the wind caught the weightless butterflies, lifting them in a stream up to the sky, where the early rays of the sun gave them color and life again, so they looked as though they were fluttering their delicate wings in search of the elusive scents of flowers.

  I bent down with him and we both took out another handful, and another, and another, until there were none left and we watched as the ribbon of wings was pulled farther and farther out to sea by the wind until it faded from sight. In my heart I said a prayer that they would go on flying forever.

  “One more left,” he said. In his palm lay the Rajah Brooke Birdwing, the butterfly he had been hunting just before my mother became ill. Bits of broken glass had shredded the edges of its immense black wings, but it still looked sleek and powerful, ready to soar again.

  He opened my hand and placed it in my palm. “Do what you wish with it.”

  I stroked its wings, which still felt smooth and silky. From the look in my father’s eyes, I knew what had to be done. So I launched it into the unseen currents of the air, where it seemed to stretch its long-unused wings with a yearning pleasure that was almost tangible. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder as we tracked its resurrected flight. It rose higher and higher until it was lost in the brightness of the new day.

  I had bribed the man in charge of the incinerators to cremate Aunt Mei separately, instead of collectively with the bodies of the other prisoners the Japanese regularly killed. It angered me that I could not have done the same for Isabel; her body had disappeared.

  I entered Endo-san’s office and informed him that I was duty-bound to let my grandfather know of Aunt Mei’s death and to return her ashes to him for the proper rites to be performed.