The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  I grabbed Leuk by the arm and shouted at him to run. Instead, Leuk shouted back at the man and told him to get lost.

  “Little bastards,” he repeated. “I’ll skin you both alive.”

  Leuk crouched down and picked up a large rock. He drew his arm back and took aim, and as the man came closer, my brother swung around and hurled it at him. The rock struck him right beneath his left eye, and I heard a terrible crack. The man screamed and fell backward, clawing his face as though he thought the rock was embedded in his skull. There was blood everywhere.

  Leuk shouted that we should go. But I wasn’t ready to leave. I took the matches from my pocket and clambered up a low branch. One of the strings of flags had come loose and was within my reach. It took only a moment for the flame to catch, and as I landed back on the ground, the fire was spreading quickly through the tree. The fire ran through the string and flags to the next tree, which was diseased. Its dead leaves sparked to life with an angry crackle, and just as we turned to run home, a pair of swallows sailed from the branches and out over the ruins of the festival.

  Two days later, I was by myself in the little Wah Ying market. Ming had sent me out to get some vegetables, though I hadn’t really paid attention to her instructions. I stood at the meagre vegetable stall trying to decide what I should buy, while the vendor glared at me in annoyance. The girl next to me knew what she was doing. She was about my age and dressed in servant’s clothes. I thought she was very thin, but I rarely saw myself in a mirror and easily forgot how thin I was, too. I had a rash on my legs that wouldn’t go away, and a small sore on my hand that was healing very slowly.

  I asked the girl what she was getting and which one was water spinach. She pointed to a small heap of greens and asked me if I knew how to cook them. I laughed and said of course not, but then immediately felt stupid. She looked contemptuously at me and said it wasn’t hard, and I nodded in embarrassment.

  She spoke with an accent I’d never heard before. After paying, she hoisted a shopping basket over her shoulder, and I realized I’d seen her many times before in the market. She was always in a rush. I asked her if I could walk with her. I found her very pretty despite the scowl on her face. She looked at me nervously for a moment and then agreed but said she had to get back.

  She was from Shantou and her name was Ling. Despite her small size, she was actually sixteen, and she seemed relieved to hear I was only twelve. I asked her a couple of times why she was so far from home, but she only said she was here to work. She was a servant in the home of one of the richer merchants in town, a Cheung patriarch I had seen around and who was very old. She was quiet and a little sullen after that, but when I said I came from Hong Kong, she became excited and asked me all about the city. I described it as it was before the invasion, and her face lit up when I talked about the Jockey Club, the harbour, and the food stalls.

  When we turned a corner and the Cheung house came into view, she stopped and said she would go on her own now. I asked if I could walk her all the way home, but she shook her head and became quiet. So I asked her if we could meet again, and she said she went to the market at the same time almost every day. She said she could meet me there again if I didn’t delay her and if I would tell her more about Hong Kong.

  I met Ling at the market three days in a row, always mid-morning. I enjoyed being with her and told her all the stories about Hong Kong I could think of. She especially liked hearing about Western things and the British, so I talked about the church my father had built, my school, Christmas dinners, and still more about the Jockey Club.

  These stories filled our walks to her house. She said her employer knew when she left and watched the clock while she was out, so she had to keep shopping while we talked. On the first day, when I asked her about her family, she gave a vague answer. When she reached out to pick through the goods in the stalls, I noticed she had bruises on her arms. She didn’t strike me as a typical maid, because she could read and spoke well. She took a lot of care in selecting the food she bought, and talked a lot about which ones were good for a person’s health and why. I started to tease her a little about these ideas and made her laugh.

  On the fourth of our morning meetings — by which time Leuk had given up on having someone to spend the first half of the day with — she told me I could come into Mr. Cheung’s house with her.

  “Is that safe?”

  “Yes, the old man’s away visiting his son. There’s just the old woman and the gardener at home now.”

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  She said not to worry. She paid for the last of her vegetables and put the rest of her coins back into a small cloth bag that she wore around her neck, and we left the market together.

  At the end of the market, a woman had laid out some pottery for sale. Ling noticed a large serving plate painted with chrysanthemums in red and blue. She pointed at it and said, “I like that.” A swallow flew from the eaves of a nearby building, and she looked up and watched it for a moment. “Tell me again about the garden in your house,” she said.

  I knew that she meant the rooftop, so I described it again.

  “Chickens on the roof,” she said. “That’s funny.”

  We were about halfway to the Cheung house. The basket looked heavy, so I offered to carry it. “I have a lot to do,” she said.

  “I could come in and help you. Or would the old woman come down?”

  “No, she can’t walk and stays in bed all day. I have to carry the food up to her room.” We came up to the front gate.

  “Can I go inside with you?” I asked again.

  She looked at me and pushed the gate open. We went in through the servants’ door at the back, and as we entered, I noticed the gardener tending a small garden with a fish pond. He looked up and watched as we went into the kitchen.

  Ling got to work immediately. She laid out the vegetables and started to wash and chop them after putting a large pot of water on the fire. She scowled as she did this, and when she rolled up her sleeves to chop, the full extent of the markings on her forearms was visible. She made this motion quickly, probably out of habit, and the minute she did so, she looked up, saw that I was looking, and pushed her sleeves back down.

  For a minute she stared down at the counter. Then she started sniffling over the vegetables and wiped her eyes.

  Like an idiot, I said nothing. She paused, resting her palms on the chopping block, and cried harder. Finally, without looking up, she spoke to me.

  “Please go home.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  Then she really began to weep, a deep, gasping sob that she struggled to repress as she held her apron over her mouth, as though through long practice she had learned that the depth of her breathing was the only thing she could control. I walked over to her and put one hand on her back as I guided her to a chair, the way I had seen Kei do with Ming. I brought her a cup of water while the soup bubbled on the stove.

  After a few minutes, she told me who she was. Her father had been a merchant in Shantou, and she had been born in a large house near the port. She and her brother went to school and worked in their father’s business from time to time, a store that sold traditional medicines in bulk.

  But when she was thirteen, her mother died, and her father began to gamble and drink. He fell heavily into debt to members of a criminal gang, who then auctioned his debt off to their cronies, one of whom was an associate of Mr. Cheung’s. Finally, Mr. Cheung was the next in line, but he didn’t assume the debt. Instead, Mr. Cheung offered to absolve it if Ling’s father would grant him the children in perpetual servitude. By then the father was a permanent drunkard and the business was closed. The children rarely saw him and had to fend for themselves. Two years after her mother’s death, gang members came to their school one morning and dragged Ling and her brother through the street to their headquarters. Her brother was sold to yet another family, and Ling was brought to the countryside to be a bondsmaid in Wah Ying. She had
no idea where her brother was.

  Ling wept during parts of the story, while other parts she told plainly. She said Mr. Cheung beat her regularly, as did his wife when she came within reach of the old woman’s chair. The old woman was always wrapped in silk robes and shawls to keep her warm, and Ling dreaded the swishing sound the old woman made as she lashed out at her, even as Ling tried to feed her.

  She rolled her sleeves back up to show me her arms. The Cheungs had weakened in the two years since she arrived. Age and infirmity were degrading their bodies, which at first was good for Ling. But with their infirmity a new fear had arisen, namely that they would die and she would be inherited by Mr. Cheung’s son, whose able-bodied violence she had experienced once, when he came to visit.

  She coped with her terror of the future by obsessing over the quality of the food she prepared for the old couple. She had learned a little about traditional medicine from her father’s business, and in the market she was constantly asking vendors which foods and vegetables were the most sustaining. From this she had put together her own beliefs about what to serve the old couple, at what time of day, how best to prepare it, what to make when either seemed ill or tired or reported some new complaint.

  She straightened herself, wiped her face, and went back to making Mrs. Cheung’s lunch. As she talked, she calmed herself by telling me her theories about how the food she made would cure or sustain them, or at least keep them on a slow but steady decline until they became near invalids with only the ability to eat. She talked about pickled mustard root, steamed bamboo shoots, rice cooked with salted pomelo skin. I knew a little about these old medicines from my mother, but none of what Ling said made sense. My mother used to visit the pharmacist and herbalist and return with their compounds. Everything Ling said was her own invention. Later, I watched her climb the stairs to Mrs. Cheung’s room, inhaling the steam from some thin broth of who knew what, convinced that she was drawing out her captors’ lives when her efforts may well have been useless.

  Everything she did seemed to come from the unsettling serenity of someone sealed up in her own world, in a secret, deeper prison invisible even to her owners. She was making a small batch of noodles for the soup, and as she worked the soft dough over the floured board with a rolling pin, she stared into its blankness. The flour clouded the air around the board and settled on her arms like a mask to conceal the bruises.

  She looked up for a moment and smiled to herself as she stretched the dough out as long as possible. Long life, of course, because everything must stand for something else. I saw that Ling, like me, had seen things she wanted to forget, and — as with her ideas about medicine — she worked constantly to transform her memories into something else. The story of her mother’s death echoed in my thoughts. I thought of how alone and lost we were, and I yearned to hear a different voice, a solid, adult voice, that could speak to me across the distance of space or from a different time and reassure me. From her expression Ling looked as though she was deep in some well-rehearsed daydream of comfort. Her arms stretched out gently over the floured board. The loose flour rose up as she worked it, and it seemed as though she would disappear into that cloud.

  At that moment, it seemed like a mistake to have touched her earlier. I opened the hand I had laid on her back and suddenly my palm felt dry and dirty. She looked at me again and I believed she read my thoughts about her. She smiled all the same. Somewhere under my ribs, I felt a subtle crack.

  A harsh metallic clang woke me the next morning. I ran out of the house wearing only my underwear. A man was running through the streets striking a gong and shouting at everyone to get up. Many people were already out, and I ran back to the house to wake Leuk, Wei-Ming, and Yee-Lin. A half-dozen planes flew overheard.

  The Japanese had been spotted on the road just before dawn by a civil defence volunteer. The townspeople were unprepared and panic erupted. A man from the neighbouring house said he would fight and shook an old rifle in the air to the cheers of other men.

  Yee-Lin was already up and packing our belongings. I got dressed, found my belt, and made sure Leuk had his too. Only Yee-Lin knew about the gold we carried, and we never talked about it. Wei-Ming would be certain to say something if she knew.

  “Chung-Man, get Kei and Ming and tell them to come with us,” said Yee-Lin.

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Into the woods. To a river if we can find a boat. There must be a way out. They may know how.”

  I went to the kitchen and found them already up and strangely calm.

  “It’s the Japanese, isn’t it?” said Kei. “What should we do?”

  “Run. We’re going to try to make it out. Come with us and tell us where to go. Is there a place to hide in the woods, or a boat?”

  Kei looked at Ming. “I have to get my parents first. I can’t leave without them.”

  Ming looked stricken. She froze for a moment, one hand tying a string around a small bag of rice. She stared at Kei. “Your mother can’t walk. How can we bring them?”

  “I can’t leave my parents, Ming.”

  Yee-Lin came into the kitchen, laden with our bags and holding Wei-Ming’s hand. She gave me my bag and reached over and seized Ming by the arm.

  “Don’t wait for him,” she told her. “Come with us.” She stared hard at Ming, and then she put her hands over Wei-Ming’s ears and turned to Kei. “They won’t want your parents,” she said in a low voice. “They’ll butcher them and take their house. They may even force you to kill them. They’ll take Ming for themselves. Forget your parents, and help us out of here.”

  Kei put his hands on his wife’s shoulders and looked at Yee-Lin. It took him a moment to understand what she had said.

  “All right.”

  We took everything we could and ignored the panic in the village. People were arming themselves with hoes, rakes, and hunting rifles, and hiding their children in cellars and sheds. I watched them scurry around and I thought of the streets and skies in Hong Kong: the constant hum of trucks and planes, the empty faces, people beaten and left on the pavement, the ration stations. I thought, You haven’t seen their flag.

  Kei led us to the edge of the village. We avoided the main entrance to Wah Ying since we assumed the Japanese would come through it. When we were far from the town centre, it was almost quiet. We were approaching the river, and when I heard it rushing, I thought of how we used to swim in it.

  “Kei! What are you doing?” Mr. Lee was stumbling up the road, cigarette in one hand and his shirt half buttoned. “Where are you going?”

  Kei and Ming could easily have outrun the old man but instead turned around, and Kei tried to answer him.

  “Father, it’s the Japanese. The Leung children have seen them before. They said we should all leave the village now.”

  “Leave?” screamed Mr. Lee. “How can you leave us? Your mother is in bed. She needs help. There’s nowhere to go. Stay here, you coward. Let these filthy kids rot in the woods.” When Kei didn’t respond, Mr. Lee struck him on the face. He fell to the ground and Ming screamed for him to stop. She knelt down to help him and Mr. Lee started to kick them both, screaming at them to come home.

  Kei covered his face as his father kicked him. I thought the old man would kill him this time. Though Mr. Lee tottered and missed twice, he landed another kick straight to his son’s head, and in his blind rage he drew his foot back to strike again. Then Kei reached out and seized his father’s ankle. Mr. Lee stumbled, and his shoe came loose and struck Kei in the face, and Mr. Lee hit the ground hard, striking his head against a dried rut in the road.

  He lay gasping on his back and Kei sobbed and apologized. Yee-Lin and I shouted at him and Ming to come with us now. Mr. Lee rolled onto his side, clutching his head as blood ran from his scalp and down his neck. I grabbed Kei by the shoulder and forced him to look at me.

  “Show us where to go,” I said. He came to his senses and led us away.

  Behind us, Mr. Lee propped himself up on
the gravel and shouted after his son. “You dog! Don’t run away from your mother! You’ll rot in hell!”

  Kei took Ming by the hand and pushed forward, aiming for the forest at the village edge.

  What made us think they would come by the main road? Of course, they came from everywhere: the roads, the sky, the trees. I heard the planes again just as we reached the woods. Maybe Tai Fo is burning now, I thought. I saw my aunt and uncle in their home, the roof blown open by artillery and the walls ablaze. My aunt ran in circles in her slippers and my uncle, ensnared by his long magistrate’s robes, whirled with flame.

  We weren’t far into the woods when I spotted them. Maybe twenty soldiers in khaki uniforms, but so drenched in sweat they seemed to be swimming through the trees, bayonets in hand.

  They saw us too, and two soldiers in front pointed their rifles at us. Ming screamed and Kei shouted at us to turn around. But Yee-Lin, Leuk, and I were long past the shock. There was only one thing for me to do if I was to live. I dropped my bag, grabbed Wei-Ming with both my arms, and dragged her quickly back towards the village.

  TWENTY

  The soldier who spoke Cantonese was in charge. He barked the words out, spittle flying from his lips, and he seemed about to burst out of his uniform as he forcibly enounced each syllable. In the late afternoon heat he marched slowly up and down before village men who’d been made to kneel in long lines while his commanding officer sat behind him on a folding stool, drinking tea beneath a tree. The soldier who poured the tea wore white gloves and looked about Kei’s age. In the distance, I heard a house collapse as the last of its supporting beams burned away.

  “Any household found concealing valuables will see its family members shot, one by one, starting with the youngest. As long as there is compliance, no one else will be harmed.” He made this promise as he looked out over the bleeding heads of the Chinese men who knelt before him on the ground. But they weren’t kneeling to him, or even to his commander behind him. They were kneeling to the emperor, who sat far away across the sea, serene in his cool palace, his divinity preserved by our capture.