The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  Mrs. Yee and her children returned. She tapped her shoes delicately over the marble as though to escape notice.

  “Please sit,” said my mother. Yee-Lin got up and spoke to the two girls, trying to reassure them. She rested her hands on Shun-Po’s shoulders for a moment, as the girl’s eyes darted nervously between her dishes and her mother, and then she returned to her seat.

  The Yees sat at the end of the table, with Shun-Yau between me and his mother. He perched on the stool several inches too far from the table, his hands tucked under his legs, and stared at his knees. Mrs. Yee and the girls pulled themselves in. She looked at her son for a moment. Her eyes darted nervously around the table, always back to my mother and Sheung. Finally she leaned over and touched Shun-Yau’s sleeve.

  “Please sit properly,” she whispered. Shun-Yau didn’t move. I stared at the fish on my plate. “Please.” Shun-Lai and Shun-Po sat upright in their chairs with their hands folded in their laps.

  “Girls, please eat,” said my mother. “Leuk, pass them some vegetables.” He reached over for a plate of cabbage and passed it to Shun-Lai, who took it with a whispered thanks. My mother called Ah-Tseng back and asked her to prepare an extra dish of vegetables. Yee-Lin got up again and poured tea for Mrs. Yee, whose eyes were fixed on her son.

  “Shun-Yau.” Mrs. Yee leaned towards him. Her eyes jumped back and forth between him and my mother, who looked down at her bowl and said a few trivial words to Yee-Lin.

  Mrs. Yee bit her lip. She reached over again with a trembling hand. Shun-Yau stared at his knees, glowering. His face had gone red as blood.

  “Please sit properly,” she said. “And eat.” Then she touched his arm again. He jerked violently and her fingers flew from his jacket. Shun-Yau’s eyes rimmed with water and he blinked hard several times. Across the table, Shun-Po coughed weakly. Her head was bowed over her rice bowl so that her hair partly concealed her face.

  Shun-Yau made a few quick noises in his throat, bowing his head deeper until his chin was nearly on his chest. He made a low groan as though he was about to vomit. Mrs. Yee put her hands on the edge of the table and leaned over again.

  “Shun-Yau. You must sit like everyone else.” He held his breath and looked up, daring us to look into his red-rimmed eyes. Then he pulled his stool up to the table. Mrs. Yee watched him for a moment, but when their eyes met, she looked away to her dish. I reached over and picked up a plate of fish and set it before the Yees. Mrs. Yee took some, and I offered it to Shun-Yau. He hesitated for a moment before pulling the dish towards his bowl. In it lay thin steaks of halibut, brown and crispy in salt, and with the large spinal bone still in the flesh, the way it was always served.

  Mr. Yee, who would never sit at our table, had been wealthy and well-connected like my father. But unlike my father, he died in the street, watching the Japanese throw his family from their house at gunpoint. He had seen his children’s faces as an officer pointed a revolver at his temple. He was buried without ceremony, maybe in one of the smoking corpse heaps I’d heard my brothers whispering about one evening.

  Two days later, the doorbell rang again. I was in the library with Leuk and Shun-Lai. I had invited Shun-Yau, but Shun-Lai told me he never left his room except for meals. I ran into the hall, where I found Chow and Sheung by the door. Sheung shouted, “Who is it?” through the door, and a woman replied. Chow tucked the gun back in his belt and opened the door, just as my mother came down the stairs.

  I recognized Mrs. Wong from the neighbourhood. She and her husband owned a large jewellery shop and their son was the clerk. They bought gold from one of my father’s factories. She had a suitcase and her daughter with her, a girl of about fifteen. Once the door was open, she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and sobbed. My mother took Mrs. Wong’s hand, and told her and her daughter to come in.

  They weren’t the last. As the world outside descended into violence, the house filled up. It became a place of jostling children and harried servants, of dislocated adults drifting through the halls. Wei-Ming was happy to have other children her age to play with, and I think it consoled my mother to see my sister running and laughing around the house again. I helped set up their rooms and beds, and tried to keep the other children occupied, showing them where they could study in the library. They kept me busy. But sometimes I stood back and looked at that crowd of grieving and broken families filling the halls, and their noise and clutter hammered my brain until I ached. I saw them as a second invasion, a leaderless army bearing fear as its weapon.

  Despite the caution of the adults around me, I caught bits of their conversations and fragments of radio broadcasts, and throughout December I pieced together what had happened to Hong Kong. On December 8, the Japanese Imperial Army, who had invaded northeastern China several weeks earlier and were working their way south, crossed the Shenzhen River that separated the British colony from the mainland. This left them only about thirty miles north of the mainland portion of Hong Kong, and so about forty miles from where we lived on Hong Kong Island. The Allied forces that had assembled there either succumbed or pulled back from the onslaught, and eventually the Japanese penetrated the New Territories into Hong Kong itself. Even as the Japanese moved inward on land, they had already bombed Kai Tak Airport on the eighth, weakening the British. The blasts we heard at my school that morning were the sound of the airport being shelled, the sound of a fatal blow.

  I’m recounting this quickly, as if I were reading from a history book, but at the time I knew even less, and the adults around me didn’t know much more. We had no idea where the fighting was or what progress the Japanese made each day. We only heard of it as one hears of a change in the weather, that a hurricane or typhoon is coming.

  The truth is that one never knows enough. Looking back into the past is a lonely game of self-delusion, watching people and events move with an inevitability that never was. The history books tell everything with such certainty. But at the time, nothing seemed inevitable to me. Some things were impossible or unlikely, some things expected, but most of all, beyond the routine of daily life, the world was a mystery. We knew little until it happened.

  A few days after the Wongs arrived, I found Sheung and Tang sitting in my father’s study — my mother insisted we still call it that — listening to the broadcast in English. I caught something about American planes and Kai Tak Airport. My brothers spent a lot of time by the radio but rarely had anything helpful to report.

  Throughout the house, people sat idly or paced the halls and rooms, busying themselves with minor tasks and conversations in our little island of ignorance. Mrs. Yee and Mrs. Wong, when they emerged from their rooms, talked only about what their children should eat and how long it would be before they resumed their studies. The three girls from these families played together but avoided my sister. Shun-Yau stayed in his room.

  I got mad at Leuk one evening when he broke a model plane I had put together a couple of years earlier. I banned him from my room and refused to talk to him. But after an hour I realized that I wasn’t as attached to the plane as I thought I had been. I was bored and decided I would coax Shun-Yau from his room. Trucks had been barrelling down the street all that evening, but it didn’t worry me — the walls of the house and the leaded windows had a way of muffling street noise.

  I went down to the second floor and stood outside Shun-Yau’s room. His mother and Shun-Po were in one room, and Ah-Tseng had converted a small disused study into a space for him. I put my ear against the door, then knelt down and tried to listen under the jamb. It was a plain room without rugs and had little furniture, and sound echoed easily against the walls and marble floor. I heard pages turning and then bedsprings creaking as he shifted on his bed. I paused, and then I knocked on the door. At first he was silent.

  “Mother?”

  “It’s me, Chung-Man. Do you want to see something?”

  He didn’t reply at first, and I heard a few more pages flip. The door behind me creaked on the opposite side of the h
all, and I turned to see Mrs. Yee peering through the half-open door. She gave me a look of tragic, almost beggarly gratitude underlined by a weak smile, and then she retreated into her room and quietly shut the door.

  “No,” Shun-Yau said. I heard him shift on the bed again.

  “Come on. I’m bored. There’s something you should see. It’s an animal.”

  The springs creaked again, and I was about to walk away when the door opened a few inches, framing the right side of his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Just come out.” I drummed my fingers on the door. He opened it, showing an impressive cowlick on the right side of his head, as if he had been lying in bed all day. I nodded to him to come. He opened the door all the way and stepped out. We walked towards the stairs, and I heard his mother’s door creak open as we passed.

  I took him down to the cellar. To get there we had to walk down to the main floor, through the entrance hall into the dining room, and then through the kitchen to a storage room near the back of the house where the servants kept pickled vegetables, rice, dried fish, and a small icebox where the maids put fresh meat and fish every day. At the back of that room was a plain wooden door.

  In the storage room by the kitchen was the sharp, pungent odour of dried seafood and fermenting vegetables. The cellar air carried a damp smell of earth and dissipated fetor, and it wafted up the stairs and mingled with the storage room odour. The cellar air was milder but not fresh. I turned the light on and told Shun-Yau to follow me down the stone stairway.

  At the bottom, I hit the next switch, and we went down a short passage lined with empty containers, tools, and crates. We turned into a room lit by a single window fitted with iron bars.

  In a corner near the window were three large wicker baskets, each about three feet high and fitted with tight wicker lids.

  Shun-Yau blinked uncomfortably in the gloom. He looked at the window, then the baskets, and then turned back to look at the door and the passage lights.

  “What’s in here?” he asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just those baskets.”

  He stared at them. “That’s it?”

  “Don’t you want to see them?”

  “Maybe.”

  I stood beside the first one. He started as I left his side, but he didn’t follow me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Just come here.” Then I pulled a small flashlight from my pocket.

  Shun-Yau fidgeted and took a few steps towards me. I turned the flashlight on and loosened the basket lid. As I worked it off, a soft, shifting sound came from inside, like a hand brushing over a wall. Then the lid was free and I took it off.

  “Look inside,” I said and shone the flashlight down.

  At first I saw only the tight weave of the wicker. Then I heard the shifting sound again, and two small yellow points gleamed back into the light: eyes. Shun-Yau caught his breath but didn’t back away. I turned the flashlight to its highest power. A brownish snake, flecked with pale green, slid slowly around the bottom of the basket, flicking its tongue as it tasted the changed air.

  Shun-Yau’s eyes widened, and he smiled.

  “Wah! Is that the only one?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s big!” he said. He took the flashlight and reached as far down as he could. As his hand moved closer, the snake drew up against the side of the basket and drank in the light.

  “It doesn’t scare you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “We have this kind in our garden all the time, but not this big. When I get back home, I’ll have to catch one and grow it in a cage like you.”

  “It’s not a pet,” I said. “We buy them every November from the market and my older brothers host a big dinner in December like my father used to. When the snake butcher comes, he grabs one by the tail and cracks it like a whip to kill it. Then he takes a big knife out and ffffft” — I ran my finger down my arm — “he slits the skin and pulls it off like a sleeve.”

  By now Shun-Yau had reached in with his other arm and was coaxing the reptile to taste his fingertips. The sight unnerved me, and I shuddered. Shun-Yau snickered.

  “I just ate a cookie. He must like the sugar.” He wiggled his fingers at the snake. “Let’s see the others.”

  I let him keep the flashlight as I put the lid back on the basket, and he helped me loosen the next one. “I thought there’d be two in each one,” I said. We worked the lid off, but there was no sound from within. Shun-Yau tilted the basket as he thrust the flashlight down.

  At the bottom lay the stiff curls of two dead snakes. I caught a faint whiff of rot as Shun-Yau moved the light over them. One snake was bent in the middle, covered in bite marks. Their skin was dull and greyish.

  Shun-Yau shone the light closer on the bitten snake and shook the basket a little. The bodies slid over and a few maggots crawled out of one of the wounds.

  “Yuck,” I said. “Let’s put this back on.”

  We put the lid back and looked at the third basket. Shun-Yau held the lid and rocked it a little. Something slid over the bottom.

  “Let’s not bother,” I said.

  He crouched down and held the flashlight close to the bottom side of the basket.

  “If they’re still alive, maybe they’ll see the light through the cracks,” he said. He waved the light over the basket. There was no response, and I pulled on his sleeve.

  “They’re probably all dead. Let’s go.”

  “What about the one that’s alive?” he asked.

  “Just leave it.” I wanted to get out of there.

  He shone the light at the bottom of the first basket and waved it back and forth. Inside, we heard the last snake move slowly across to catch the glimmer. I imagined the light piercing the wicker, like sunrise shining through the grass, and I felt sorry that this would be the snake’s last memory of light.

  Ah-Tseng frowned at us when we walked back through the kitchen. “Where were you? It’s suppertime. Go wash your hands and sit down. Your mothers are already there.”

  Shun-Yau tugged my sleeve quickly before running to the bathroom. “Thanks for showing me that,” he said.

  After supper, I went upstairs. As I passed the second-floor landing, I noticed Shun-Yau’s door was closed again. Mrs. Yee was arguing with one of her daughters in their cramped room across the hall, and I could hear them all the way up the stairs.

  I went to the fifth-floor parlour at the front of the house. We rarely used this room, and most of the furniture was covered in cloth to keep the dust off. There was a set of very high windows that looked down into the front courtyard and the street, and you could see all the way to the racetrack from there.

  I opened the windows into the room and was preparing to push open the shutters when I heard trucks coming down the road. I left the shutters closed and peered through the slats into the street. The Japanese still permitted the street lights at night. The moon was up on my right, but it was a thin sliver of new moon and too weak to illuminate the room.

  Through the broken light of the slats, I saw three British trucks turn onto our street. The first one halted and the others braked abruptly. A soldier jumped out of the first truck’s driver’s seat, ran around to the back, and shouted. Five or six soldiers climbed out of the back holding rifles. The driver barked something at them. But when artillery suddenly rumbled in the distance, they all looked around and more soldiers jumped out of the third truck. A couple of them pointed up at our house. I knew they couldn’t see me because I had the lights off.

  The guns rumbled again. The driver barked orders, the others got back into their trucks, and the convoy raced down the street. Now the street looked again as it always had. A faint sheen of water trickled down the gutter under the street lamps, and in the silence I heard the blood in my ears, fffft, fffft, fffft. I shut the window. It would be a long time before I was inside that room again.

  SIX

  I had begun to wear my father’s watch. Sheung gave it to me after
cleaning out some boxes of our father’s belongings. The crystal was marked with a light scratch, and I soon developed a habit of running my fingernail over it while I was thinking.

  At night I took it off and put it on the bedside table. One night its ticking seemed unusually loud. I woke from a noisy dream and noticed the ticking in my ears. I put the watch on and looked at it: 4:05, December 15.

  I sat up and went to the window. I lifted it and opened the shutters, and the silence ended. Before me was a new world. My window looked northward towards the mainland, and though it was dark, the city was lit up. Everywhere buildings were on fire. Trees blazed like torches, and smoke rose in red and orange columns like banners of conquest. There was no sound of fire trucks or ambulances.

  Northward over the harbour, I thought the stars had lined up in rows. It was the glint of reflected moonlight on the bomber planes harrying the waterfront where the ships docked. As if acknowledging my witness, they unleashed their cargo, and I watched the bombs fall. They were far enough away that I heard their explosions only as a gentle thrumming, like fingers tapping on my door.

  The heavy gunfire came closer. It was the first time I heard it unfiltered by the walls of the house, and with every blast I imagined a building collapsing under its force. My hands and scalp went cold. I closed the shutters and ran into the hall, where I found Tang.

  “They must have crossed the harbour,” he said.

  That meant the mainland was lost and the British were cornered on the island. I asked him what we should do. He turned away and ran down the stairs to the main floor.

  I followed him and found my mother already at the doors with Chow and Ah-Tseng. I ran to my mother and she looked at me and took my hand.

  “Where are Leuk and Wei-Ming?”

  Another blast shook the air and a tall porcelain vase rattled on its wooden stand. Chow turned the heavy bolt on the door. Other families came downstairs now, including the Yees. Leuk came down with Wei-Ming and she ran to my mother.