The sharpest memory I still held of my mother was of the period during her illness when I was seven. She and my father had been visiting the tin mines in Sungai Lembing, a one-street town located in a central state of Malaya. She had accompanied him in his search for a rare butterfly, and when they returned home she started to show the symptoms of malaria. There were no complications and she should have recovered, but who is to question such things? My father turned one of the rooms into a sanatorium, appointed a nurse to look after her, and had the doctors visit our home twice a day. During that time only Aunt Yu Mei visited. My grandfather stayed away.
She slept most of the time, even when I was brought in to see her. The smell of her room—of the frangipani flowers she so loved that were placed there by my father daily—made me nauseous. I would make excuses to avoid going in there, especially when the fever seized and shook her. I spent more time on the beach, hidden away so no one could find me. When she died the servants had to search the beach to take me home.
I could only stand in silence when my father saw me after the servants finally brought me to her room. He walked around the bed and even then I did not feel his arms around me. I saw only my mother, eyes closed, skin pulled taut, her famous cheekbones now unnaturally high and sharp.
As though to compensate for the horror of the previous weeks, the funeral was beautiful. It was a Buddhist ceremony, though the local Anglican priest had protested strongly. It was a puzzle to me why he had done so—my mother had never been a Christian. All of us attended the ceremony, much to the priest’s disapproval.
On the day of the funeral, three monks came to Istana. I stood by a window and watched them as they entered the driveway. They walked across the lawn—the grass so young and new it gave off an unnatural luminescence—past the stone fountain that my mother had loved so much and through the doorway with the cross hanging above the lintel. The monks’ saffron robes seemed to catch fire in the sun, so that they looked like flames blowing into our home. The monks led the ceremony that went on through the night until dawn. They rang their bells and chanted from a tattered book, circling the coffin, leading the spirit to its destination, ensuring it would not lose its way.
William tried to comfort me, but I pushed him away. Isabel cried softly. She had found a replacement mother in mine after her own mother’s death, and now had lost another one. Edward stood in a corner, solemn but unaffected; he had not been close to my mother. My father reached for my hand. He tried to smile but was overcome by sorrow. I pulled my hand away and he did not even feel it. I was suddenly sorry for my fears and disgust of the past weeks, sorry I could not see or touch my mother again. She was gone.
In the weeks after the funeral my father spent more time with his children—especially me—and Isabel and William tried to include me in outings with their friends. But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island that Endo-san would one day make his home.
The thin, childlike cries of the swallows brought me back to the Wat Chaiya Mangkalaram Temple. I inserted the joss sticks into the ashes in the vase, making sure all three sticks were straight and would not lean to one side. Aunt Mei was very particular about such matters.
We tidied up the table and packed our little basket. The fruit would be left for the monks. A few worshippers glanced at me as we walked out. As we passed a wall of murals, each panel a scene from the life of the Buddha, Aunt Mei said, “Your grandfather would like to see you.”
She was aware of the effect of her words. We both stopped at the same time and studied a panel. The paint had faded and in some places had peeled, leaving behind a musty picture of an Indian prince beneath a tree, one hand stretched out into a void.
“After all this time?” I asked.
“He just wants to talk to you.”
“Did you have anything to do with it?” I asked.
“Of course I did,” she said, her glasses waving in her hand, and I realized I was being impertinent: she had been trying to persuade my grandfather to meet me since the day I was born. “Will you go and see him?”
I looked at her eager eyes, at her plump face, and knew I owed it to her to do so. I took her hand in mine—it felt so soft and warm—and said, “I’ll have to think about it. I really don’t know now.”
“When will you know?” she asked, making sure I would not elude her.
“When I come back from Kuala Lumpur. I’m leaving next week.”
“You are going to K.L.?”
“Yes,” I replied, wondering if the sharper tone I had heard in her voice was imagined.
She looked at me. “I’ll inform your grandfather.”
* * *
Endo-san was solemn when we bowed and concluded the class. “Come with me,” he said. We entered his house and he ordered me to sit and wait. He went into the back and came out with a long narrow box.
“This is for you,” he said, lifting it up with both hands and bending to touch his forehead to it.
I received it in the same manner and placed it on the
tatami
mat. I undid the dark gray ribbon that bound it and opened the box. Inside, a
katana
rested on a bed of silk.
“It looks expensive,” I said. “And it seems to be identical to the one you use.”
“It is a companion piece to mine.”
“You’re giving a Nagamitsu sword to me?” I asked, my eyes widening. He had told me that his sword was unique, and much sought after by collectors because it had been specially commissioned.
Although it was customary for Japanese swords to be made in pairs, one sword was always made much shorter than the other for close-quarter fighting. What made Endo-san’s swords so highly prized and so unusual, I now realized, was that both were of the same length.
He nodded. “The swordsmith was Nagamitsu Yasuji, a member of the great Nagamitsu family which had been forging swords since the thirteenth century. This pair was made in 1890, after the Haitori Edict of 1877 prohibited the wearing of swords.”
I lifted my sword, surprised at its perfect balance. I opened it a notch and he stopped me. “That is enough. You must never pull out your sword completely without the intention of using it. Otherwise it will always thirst for blood.”
The two swords, he explained, were mounted in the
buke-zukuri
style, which was the most basic and practical. The scabbard—
saya
—was a dark brown, almost black lacquer, and the hilt was wrapped in a deep gray braid which felt rough and yet gave a comfortable grip.
“There is only one way to tell the difference between the two,” he said. “Look.” He pointed to a
kanji
character engraved on the blade near the guard.
“Kumo.
That is the name of your sword. It means
cloud.”
“And what is your sword’s name?” I asked.
“Hikari,”
he said.
“Illumination.
But
‘kari’
can also be read to mean
‘wild goose.’
“
I was overwhelmed by his gift. “This is too valuable to be given to me,” I protested even though I wanted it.
“I would rather give it to you, to be used in your lessons, than have it hidden away,” Endo-san said. “I am quite certain that Nagamitsu-san did not intend his work to be kept inside a cupboard. But remember, it must never be used casually. It is always the last resort.”
I bowed to him. “Thank you,
sensei.
But what can I give you in return?”
“That is your problem, to be solved by you alone.”
I sat thinking and then said, “I’ll be back in a little while.” I ran to the beach and rowed back to Istana. I did not even bother to tie up the boat, but went up the steps into the house and headed into the library. I went to the shelves, searching for a particular book of poems. I found it, found the page, and rowed back to Endo-san’s island. He had already brewed tea in my short absence.
He lifted one eyebrow when I knelt before him and opened the book to the marked page and began to read:
In the blossom-land Japan
Somewhere thus an old song ran.
Said a warrior to a smith
“Hammer me a sword forthwith.
Make the blade
Light as the wind on water laid.
Make it long
As the wheat at harvest song.
Supple, swift
As a snake, without rift,
Full of lightnings, thousand-eyed!
Smooth as silken cloth and thin
As the web that spiders spin.
And merciless as pain, and cold.”
“On the hilt, what shall be told?”
“On the sword’s hilt, my good man,”
Said the warrior of Japan,
“Trace for me
A running lake, a flock of sheep
And one who sings her child to sleep.”
He placed his cup on the
tatami
and I closed the book. “Who wrote that?” he asked, so softly.
“Solomon Bloomgarden. It’s a Hebrew poem. My father read it to us once, long before we knew what a warrior of Japan was.”
He sat so quietly for such a long time that I was afraid my gift had been inadequate or—worse—that I had somehow given offense. Then he blinked and smiled, although I could still see a faint shade of sorrow in his eyes.
“It is a good poem, a beautiful poem,” he said. “Your appreciation of it makes me glad, for it means you are starting to understand the lessons I am trying to teach you. Please write it down for me and I shall consider my gift of your
katana
to have been returned in full.
Domo arigato gozaimasu.
Thank you.”
Chapter Seven
Michiko closed the anthology of poetry. “It is a heartfelt poem,” she said. She touched the dusty cover of the book at almost the exact same spot Endo-san had done, on the day I read the poem to him.
“I wrote out a copy for him, just as he asked and he always carried it with him even after he had it lodged in his memory,” I said. “I once asked him why. And he said he was afraid of forgetting where he came from.”
There was no reason to show her the book—I could still recite the poem from memory—but somehow it made what I had been telling her all the more real. “There were times when I wondered if it had really all happened or whether everything was a dream, like the Chinese philosopher’s dream of the butterflies,” I said.
“ ‘You the butterfly—I, Chuang Tzu’s dreaming heart,’“ she quoted Matsuo Basho’s haiku. “Does the philosopher dream of the butterfly, or is he merely the butterfly’s dream?”
I placed the book back on the shelf and led her out of the library. “It’s late.”
“I am not ready for sleep yet. Are you?” she asked.
I was not. But I felt, for the moment, unable to go on telling her about my youth. I looked out of a window into the dark night and made a sudden decision. “I want to show you something. We’ll have to walk some distance. Are you up to it?”
She nodded, her eyes sharing the infectious excitement in my voice. I went to my study and took two flashlights from a cupboard. I shook them to check that the batteries were still working and handed one to her. We walked down the wooden steps onto the beach, choosing a path high above the tide line. Hundreds of translucent crabs scuttled away at the vibrations of our footsteps, parting before us like a curtain of glass beads. There was sufficient light to render the flashlights unnecessary, so we did not switch them on.
“Do you still have your Nagamitsu sword?” she asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“I never realized the one sent to me was one of a pair,” she said. “Even the swordsmith who restored it never knew.”
“The Chinese consider it a great taboo to present a friend with a knife or a sword, as it would sever the ties of friendship and bring unhappiness,” I said. “I’ve always wondered whether Endo-san knew that.”
I walked faster, uncertain if I had made the right decision in choosing to reveal my whole life to her. I reassured myself that I could stop at any moment I wished, any moment at all.
I could have walked in total darkness, so often had I done this, and somehow she knew it, for she followed me without hesitation. There was only the thinnest slice of moon wedged into the sky between the clouds, which was perfect for what I had in mind.
The beach narrowed. Ahead, we could make out the dark clumps of boulders blocking our way and hear the waves against them. An estuary lay beyond these rocks, but to get there I had to guide her away from the beach into the windswept trees that edged the beach.
The walk became harder as the ground inclined upward and I switched on the flashlight so that she would not trip over tree roots. The smell of the sea was soon layered with the sharper, almost chemical, scent of fresh water as we followed a track that would bring us to the river. Crickets stitched their regimented notes into the air. The wind was cold, and the leaves in the trees rubbed together as though to keep warm.