by Tan Twan Eng
“What about him?” I asked Kon, pointing to Saotome.
“Leave him to Yong Kwan,” he said.
But Tanaka whispered, “No.” He touched my hand and said, “You know what has to be done.”
I shook my head. “He is only getting what he has inflicted so often.”
“That is not the Way,” Tanaka said. “You are an aikijutsu student now and there are obligations. Be merciful.”
I looked deep into Saotome’s eyes but I saw Isabel, running across the endless beach. I saw Peter MacAllister and I could see Edward, and I knew then that my brother would not be coming home to Penang ever again. Saotome could not move his jaw but I knew what he wanted from me.
“No, I won’t do it.” I sheathed my own sword and he shut his eyes, defeated.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’ll head for the river and follow it to Ipoh. It’s not far,” Kon said. We both carried Tanaka and headed out of the camp. Despite his terrible injuries, Tanaka did not cry out. We were almost at the river when I realized we were being followed.
“Stop,” I said. “Listen.”
The river was in full flood and we had difficulty hearing. “I’ll go back and check,” Kon said. “Keep heading for the river.”
I let Tanaka cling to me and we made our way down to the river’s edge, a natural levee that fell away abruptly. The churning water almost ten feet below had breached the banks, carrying fallen tree trunks from the highlands, their branches rising out of the unforgiving water like the hands of drowning men. The river was loud, thrusting and twisting, an endless surge of pure power. I heard a rustling behind us and tried to turn, but Tanaka’s weight on me made it difficult to move.
“It’s me,” Kon said. “You were right. Yong Kwan is behind us with Su Yen and some of the others. They are very close. I think Saotome may have raised the alarm.”
“Let me down,” Tanaka said. I dropped him gently to the ground and he held back a grunt of pain. “I cannot go on. You two must leave. Especially you,” he said to me. “You must return to your father.”
“We cannot leave you here,” Kon said. “Yong Kwan will make you suffer for as long as possible.”
There was a moment of complete understanding between master and pupil, and finally Kon nodded and said, “I will do it, sensei.”
Tanaka lifted a circular amulet from around his neck. It was a mon, his family crest. “This is for you,” he said. Kon held out his hand and I could see a faint tremor as he closed his palm around the gift. He took out Saotome’s sword and drops of rain instantly made the shiny steel surface look like bubbling molten metal, as though the blade itself was heating up.
Tanaka, with Kon’s assistance, got himself into a kneeling position. I was horrified at the agony he must be suffering and yet he managed to keep himself upright and rigid.
“You cannot go through with this,” I said to Kon, my voice clogged by anger and grief. “We still have a good chance of getting away. Don’t be a fool!”
Tanaka shook his head. “I want him to do it,” he said to me. “Do not judge your friend harshly. Someday, perhaps, you will understand how grateful I am to him.”
There was nothing more I could say, and so I bowed and whispered, “Sayonara, Tanaka-san. I am honored to have known you.”
He managed a wry smile. “Who knows, maybe we will meet again?”
“I hope so,” I said. I backed away and allowed Kon to stand over Tanaka.
“Is your stance correct?” Tanaka asked.
“Yes, sensei,” Kon replied, and I heard how his voice was just as choked as mine had been.
“Place your weight a bit more on your right leg,” Tanaka said. “Control your breathing. Loosen your grip on the handle—yes, well done.”
I watched Kon compose himself, his eyes closed in concentration as he carried out Tanaka’s instructions precisely. At this moment nothing mattered but performing his task. It was a final gesture of indebtedness to Tanaka and he was determined to do it well. He lifted his sword into the cutting position.
There was a rustle of foliage behind me. I wiped the water from my eyes and saw Su Yen appear from the jungle. She pointed a pistol at Kon.
“I do not think Yong Kwan would like that, Kon,” she said, her voice hoarse. “So you are running away and leaving me here, without even telling me or asking me to follow?”
Kon lowered his sword and I saw the pain in his eyes. But I thought I saw also an element of shameful relief, as though he were glad he had been interrupted.
“Are you going to shoot me?” he mocked. Su Yen hesitated, her expression uncertain.
Again Kon raised the sword high but a shot sent him stumbling back to the river’s edge. Yong Kwan had stepped out from behind the trees and now he moved toward Kon. I was furious at my own momentary lack of awareness, for not having felt Yong Kwan’s presence.
“Stop him!” I said to Su Yen. “Use your gun!” But the girl just stared dumbly. In a swift, unstoppable motion I had my own blade out. It bridged the distance like a whip of light, the tip wedging softly into the side of Yong Kwan’s neck, ready to cut it open.
“Put the gun down,” I said through the rain. I gave the sword a gentle nudge, drawing a driblet of blood. He winced and obeyed me.
I kept all my attention on him and shouted to Kon, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, using his sword to push himself up onto his feet. Tanaka had remained unmoving all this while, as though completely certain of the outcome.
From the corner of my eye I watched Kon gather all his will, a resolve which I doubted I would ever possess. Once again he lifted his sword to the sky, his stance correct. Blood from the gunshot wound soaked through his shirt, to be washed away instantly by the rain, as though the sight of it offended the gods.
He swung the sword down in a movement so perfect Tanaka would have commended it. I saw the sensei smile, his eyes closing just before the last moment, and I had a feeling that he approved. His body fell over and I let out a breath and closed my own eyes. I did not see Su Yen raise her pistol again. She fired twice and Kon staggered, spun around and fell off the edge of the levee into the river. By the time I reached the edge he was gone, swept away by the torrent.
Yong Kwan was grinning with satisfaction. “The girl knows who is going to take care of her. Don’t you, Su Yen?” He held out his hand to her and after a moment of hesitation she went to him.
A shaft of immense pain opened up and an overpowering rage, as turbulent as the river, shook me. I smashed Yong Kwan’s face with the hilt of my sword, knocking him unconscious. I faced Su Yen. “I should kill you, you little whore,” I said coldly.
She was expressionless, her hair in strands over her face. In the rain I could not be certain whether she was crying, as I walked away.
I searched the stretch of river for my friend, shouting his name. But there were only spinning tree trunks and fallen branches riding the current. It was useless. I turned back to the jungle and made my way home to my father.
It took me three days to find Ipoh again. I repeated Kon’s instructions in my head, sometimes hearing his voice and thinking I had gone mad, possessed by the jungle spirits that my amah used to tell me often played tricks on people who had gotten lost, making them walk in circles for days, distracting them with false sounds and laughter. There were times when the rain would stop suddenly, leaving the leaves dripping like taps that had not been turned off properly. Then the sun would raise steam from the undergrowth, creating a perverse kind of fog that was not cold but hot and heavy, impossible to breathe in.
I was aware that I was lost, and I sat on a root, unable to move, immobilized by despair. The rainforest refused to release me, and all around me the straight columniation of trees, thousands of years old, continued their reach to the sun. I grieved for my friend, but there was no one to bring me comfort.
I talked to Endo-san and asked for his help, knowing I was on the edge of succumbing to d
efeat. But the thought of my father made me get back on my feet and I walked on, trying to use the sun to give me direction. After a short distance I found shelter in the hollow of a fig tree. I sat down, slowed my breathing, and began to meditate.
I did not know how long I sat there, but the noise of aircraft brought me back. I opened my eyes, looked up through the canopy of leaves, and saw two of the largest planes I had ever seen roar past. I made note of the direction they were flying in, feeling a jolt of hope as I followed them through the trees. Within an hour I heard explosions, and knew that the British had returned, this time to complete the work they had abandoned. I followed the twisting spires of thick black smoke that braided upward into the skies and knew Ipoh was within reach.
The planes—I was told later that they were Lancasters and Halifaxes, capable of great distances and used for bombing missions—circled Ipoh, dropping their bombs on Japanese-occupied buildings. I said a prayer of gratitude to Isabel and her friends who had supplied precise information to the British. I came over a rise and Ipoh lay before me, its hills dulled by the rising gray clouds. Fires were burning and, on the wind, I heard the faint sounds of sirens, like the cries of an awakened baby.
I sat and waited until the planes circled one last time and flew away to the west, back to India. I walked into the town of Ipoh, passing little kampongs where I met smiling children and old men, waving to me. They knew that the Japanese were finished.
In the center of town, in front of the padang, I entered the railway station and went to my hotel. The hall porter’s desk was surrounded by hysterical Japanese women and I pushed them away and asked for my key. The Indian hall porter held on to the key, and looked at me steadily. “Maybe you should not go back to your room,” he said.
I held out my hand for the key and thanked him. “I have to.”
They were waiting for me, Goro and the officers from the Kempeitai. He grinned and ordered an officer to handcuff me. “Endo-san informed us that you would come back for your father,” Goro said. “You will be charged with spying, with assisting the MPAJA and with the murder of Saotome-san. If found guilty, you and your family will be publicly beheaded.” His smile turned into a sneer. “You will be found guilty, I can assure you. And I will be your executioner.”
Chapter Fifteen
I was taken in a military lorry to Butterworth, where Goro ordered me onto a boat. I felt only a strange sense of serenity as we crossed the channel into Penang. My heart was calm, as was the sea, and it seemed as though we moved across a surface of glass. Even the jellyfish floating in the deep green waters seemed to hang suspended in stillness. I neither felt the wind, nor saw the clouds resting on the peak of Penang Hill, where the tiny houses shone and glittered in the sun.
I felt the sound first, a deep, almost inaudible hum, vibrating through the membranes of the air as the Halifaxes came over, flying unnecessarily low, certain of their invincibility. I saw their shadows move over our boat, then over the surface of the sea as though some immense creatures were moving beneath us. In their wake air and water were disturbed and sea spray blew into my face. Goro ran out from below deck and watched the planes as they headed for the docks. He jumped below again, where I heard him attempting to frantically radio the air force.
The first Halifax reached the docks. Seconds later explosions rocked the harbor. We were so close I felt the singeing heat from the blast. The other two planes flew on into town. As clouds of smoke curled up into the sky my heart ached at the destruction. In their indiscriminate bombings in Europe the Allied Forces had killed thousands of civilians. Now as I watched I realized that this time, as in Ipoh, their selection of strategic locations was unerring, the targets of their bombing precise. The Japanese naval base was completely destroyed and the air above the army barracks around Fort Cornwallis shimmered from the flames burning up the military camps. The Fort itself, which housed those prisoners of war who had not been sent to the Death Railway, remained miraculously undamaged. This show of precision lit a bright flare of hope within me. I felt that Isabel and Auntie Mei and their friends had somehow played an effective part, that their deaths had not been fruitless. In the wind, Isabel’s laughter, the laughter I had known all my life, came to me. It sounded so rich and filled with joy, with all the wondrous things of life, that I felt a lightness of heart within myself.
There was no harbor left when we arrived. The boat swayed in the shallows and a sampan came out to carry us in to land. Debris and wreckage knocked against the hull as we neared the shore. The stench of burning buildings choked us and the air was dark with thick columns of smoke. Embers, some still curling with fire, floated away with the wind. I heard cries and screams. A corner of Hutton & Sons had been shorn away, exposing the offices on the top floor.
I was pushed up the stone steps from the water’s edge. I stood on the pier, trying to absorb and comprehend the extent of the destruction. Everything seemed to be charred. The roads had caved in completely, and vehicles had been thrown around by the explosions; some lay on their roofs, wheels sticking into the air, while others had been crushed into unrecognizable shapes.
The Halifaxes had turned around and were coming our way again. We saw their black eggs drop from their bellies, accompanied by a thin whistling sound. The first one hit the arms depot, and we were thrown off our feet by the resulting chain of explosions as the ammunition ignited.
A Japanese guard was holding onto a railing. The next moment he let out a cry; a wicked looking piece of shrapnel, two feet long, sprouted from his chest. Blood spurted from his mouth as he pirouetted and collapsed. There was a clatter almost like rain on a tin roof as the row of godowns behind us was hit by flying debris. The thin corrugated metal walls folded under the assault and, as they crumpled, they brought down the roof. I heard the sounds of a hundred glass windows breaking into clouds of fine, powdery fragments, filling the air like dust from a vigorously beaten carpet.
I dropped flat onto the ground, between two overturned drums of oil. The planes flew past, the ground trembling. And then they were gone.
The persistent ringing in my ears faded. I heard my breathing first, then the erratic beating of my heart. My legs felt rubbery as I rose to my feet. Goro managed to look dignified even as he struggled upright. In his eyes I saw something that until now I had never seen in any Japanese: defeat.
He gathered his people and together we made our laborious crossing over the burning roads. He stopped the first car we encountered, hauled out the hapless Malay driver and drove to government headquarters. Along the way I noticed the faces of the people of Penang. Hope had erased some of the weariness of the Japanese Occupation. Their shoulders seemed straighter, their chins higher. I was glad of this subtle transformation.
In the headquarters everything was calm. It was as though they were not aware of the bombing; perhaps they equated it with the earlier sporadic bombings carried out so halfheartedly.
I was taken into Endo-san’s office. He was staring out of the high glass windows, looking at the lawns and the bougainvillea. A macaque sat on the glistening grass, eating a rambutan, its tail beating the ground gently. Probably from the colony in the Botanical Gardens, I thought with detachment.
Endo-san’s hair, I noticed, shone brighter than ever. He was dressed in his gray yukata, trimmed with subtle threads of gold, and a black hakama.
“Get out,” he ordered Goro and then sat down behind his desk. I stood my ground.
“Tanaka-san, your childhood friend, is dead,” I said. I saw him flinch before covering his emotions.
“How?” he asked.
I took him from the events that had led to so many wasted lives to the final words of Tanaka before his death. Endo-san looked down at his hands lying on the table. Finally he said, “You should not have let Goro escape. He made his report not to me, but to Saotome-san’s office. We could have avoided all this.”
“Everything was done in vain, then,” I said.
“You know why you were arrested,�
� he said softly.
I nodded. “How is my father?”
“He is in jail.”
“You said you’d watch over him,” I said, and the rising anger in my voice could not be controlled. “Let me see him!”
He picked up a document. “You have been accused of passing military and government secrets to the triads. Do you admit this?”
I made no reply, thinking only of my father.
“Which triad? Towkay Yeap’s?”
“It doesn’t matter, Endo-san. The war is lost. It’s time you went home.”
He looked tired suddenly. “I hope so. I want to go home. Once the war is over at least my duty is done.” His voice turned soft and his face followed. “I wish to see Miyajima Island again. I want to walk through the fields where I grew up, the streets where I played, and talk to the people of my village. I just want to go home.”
I felt a sharp stab of sorrow, for his words had struck a soft resonance, like an aged monk gently sounding a bell in a temple far away as I recalled what Kon had said. He too had only wanted to see his home again.
“Let me see my father,” I said, feeling exhausted.
He came closer to me and held out his hand. I hesitated, and then took it. He brought me to him and gently he put his arms around me. I put my face into his chest, and for a few minutes we pretended things were as they had been, before the war.
“My dearest boy,” he whispered.
I pushed myself away from him. “Do your duty. Do it and go home.”
I was taken to Fort Cornwallis, just a short walk away from the offices of Hutton & Sons. In the sort of twist so beloved of history, the Fort, once built to house the British garrison, was now used to imprison the remaining British soldiers and civilians who had not been sent to the Death Railway. The prisoners, thin to the bone, wearing only tattered clothes, watched from the depths of their cells as I was led into the darkness of the Fort.