Two of the Japanese men I had met the night before at Kanazawa-san’s home led a man from a wooden shack, his hands bound with rope, and brought him to the jetty.
“But he is a Japanese,” I said.
“That makes his crime more serious.”
I waited for Endo-san to explain. “Yasuaki was caught stealing from Kanazawa-san’s shop. He had been doing it for some weeks,” Endo-san said.
“Why did he do that?”
“He was making preparations to run away, to abandon his duty. He was appointed to purchase rubber for his country. But instead he spent his time with the local women, and fell in love with one of them. The theft of food and supplies was to enable him to run off with this woman.”
“And for that he is to be punished?” I asked.
“You have absorbed your lessons well, but you have yet to comprehend how important the concept of duty is,” Endo-san said.
“Duty even above love?” I asked, thinking of his words the night before at the dinner table:
If we fail in our duty, we fail our country, and our family.
The Japanese people held duty in high esteem, I had learned, but to see it impose its unbending burden on the most timeless of human needs made me question the value of it.
He heard the tone of my voice, and softened the harshness of his words. “It has always been so in our way of life. One cannot escape it.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“That will depend on the authorities in Kuala Lumpur. He will probably be sent back to Japan.”
“Will he see the woman again?”
Endo-san shook his head and climbed into the sampan.
* * *
We passed a few fishing boats, which had dared to brave the dangers of the pirates, returning home after a night’s work. The men on board seemed to recognize the
Peranakan,
giving short bursts from their horns and calling out to Captain Albertus. When we neared Port Swettenham a shoal of flying fish shot out from the sea and soared alongside us before dropping back into the water. I stood on the stern, waiting for them to appear again, to lose their ties to the sea and, for a few moments, to find a new identity as they took their breath not from water but from wind.
Yasuaki, the Japanese rubber buyer who had placed love before his duty, watched me. Endo-san had asked me to untie his ropes and now he leaned against the stern and said, “I feel sorry for you.”
“Why?” I asked, shading my eyes against the light, hoping to see more of the flying fish.
“Nothing good will come from your association with us,” he said.
I turned away from the sea and studied him with greater attention. I placed him around Edward’s age, maybe older. Until now he had remained silent, perhaps thinking of the woman he had been separated from.
“What was her name?” I asked.
“You are the first person who has asked me her name. But what does her name matter?” Nevertheless, he looked pleased that I had asked.
“I would like to know,” I said.
He studied me for a moment. “Her name is Aslina.”
“Was she a girl from the village?”
He shook his head. “Her father ran the canteen at the airfield near the village. You would have seen the planes when they flew past. They do it every day.”
I had found a map and studied it in Kanazawa’s shop. The village we had spent the night in was an hour from Ipoh. The map showed an air force landing strip only half an hour east of the village, marked in red by the Japanese shopkeeper.
“Was she worth disobeying your duty?” I asked.
“I could not be placed in a position where I would have to harm her, or her people,” he replied.
“Harm her? How?” I asked, but he had turned back to the flying fish, an expression of longing on his face.
“You must really love her,” I said, feeling suddenly sad. I had never felt such an emotion. Isabel often went on at length about it, although we teased her. I had always thought love was a thing only young girls fretted about, but here was a seemingly intelligent man who had experienced it, and who now was paying dearly for it—his reputation ruined, the girl he loved lost to him.
“Have you ever met someone who is so close to you, so right, that nothing else matters? Somebody who, without being told, knows each and every aspect of you?”
I looked at him, uncertain of what he was trying to tell me.
“Well, that is how I feel with Aslina. And duty?” His voice turned bitter. “Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others. Others who do not have your interests at heart.”
I was about to ask him more, but Endo-san came over to me and said, “Get your things together. We will be reaching Port Swettenham very soon.”
Chapter Nine
We arrived in Port Swettenham late in the afternoon. I watched as Yasuaki was led away by the staff of the Japanese Embassy. I raised my hand in a small wave but he never returned it.
A car with a Japanese driver took us into Kuala Lumpur. We entered the town an hour later, and I recalled the last time I had been here. It was almost ten months before, when we celebrated my father’s forty-ninth birthday in the Spotted Dog Club just in front of the cricket padang in the center of the town. The ground was busy now, the cricketers running between the shadows cast by the court buildings across the road. I heard the
thock
of the ball hitting the bat and then cheers as the batsmen ran. It was a typical afternoon in the biggest town in Malaya: the English would leave their sweltering offices, go to the Spotted Dog to have a gin and tonic, play some cricket, and then return home for a bath before coming back to the club for dinner and some dancing. It was a good life, a rich life filled with ease and enjoyment.
The Japanese Embassy was a converted bungalow on a hill just behind Carcosa, once the official home of the Resident General of the Federated Malay States. The road leading up to it was cool and shady, the old angsana trees littering the way with leaves and pods and twigs that crackled under our tires. The sentry at the gates saluted us through.
A youth in military uniform brought our bags to our rooms. The fan was switched on immediately. Then we went out onto the verandah where we were served glasses of iced tea.
The Embassy looked down a wooded slope thick with flame-of-the-forest trees. I stood drinking my tea and thought about the concept of duty, which had troubled me during the entire drive. It was so confusing and, it seemed to me at that moment, so pointless. Where was the freedom of choice that each of us had been born with?
Endo-san had told me at the beginning of my lessons how strong the duty of teaching was, once undertaken. It was never offered freely or haphazardly. A prospective student had to provide letters of recommendation in order to convince a
sensei
to accept him. Teaching could never be accepted without all its burdens and obligations and I had come to understand this eventually. Yet in my mind I heard Yasuaki’s words, warning me about duty and generals and emperors. A moment of unease made me finish my drink in a single swallow.
“We must pay our respects to Saotome Akasaki-san, the ambassador to Malaya,” Endo-san said, beckoning to me to follow him downstairs.
Although the bungalow was built in the typical Anglo-Indian style, with wide wooden verandas and large airy ceilings, it had been decorated strictly by a Japanese hand. The rooms were partitioned by paper shoji screens, scrolls of calligraphy hung at well-lit positions and a faint smell of incense cleansed the air as we passed. Stark, skeletal flower arrangements stood on low tables. “These are Saotome-san’s personal arrangements,” Endo-san said. “His
ikebana
has won prizes in Tokyo.”
Another youth in uniform slid open a door and we placed our cotton slippers outside before entering. The room was bare, save for a photograph of a sullen-looking man. Endo-san knelt on the straw mats and bowed to it. I did not, but I presumed the portrait to be that of Hirohito, the emperor of Japan. We sat with our buttocks on our heels and waited for Saotome-san to join us. He entered and there was a flurry of bows before we were at last comfortable, sitting in front of a low wooden table.
The ambassador was a distinguished, almost haughty-looking man, except when he smiled. Then he looked merely handsome and ordinary. In his dark
hakama
and black and gray
yukata
robe patterned with silver chrysanthemum blossoms he appeared much older than Endo-san, although his movements were just as graceful.
“Is this your student I have heard about?” he asked in English, smiling at me. His voice was like rice paper, thin and brittle. I could picture him as somebody’s grandfather.
“Hai,
Saotome-san,” Endo-san replied, indicating for me to serve the hot
sake.
“How is his progress?”
“Very good. He has made tremendous advances, physically and mentally.”
Endo-san had never once expressly commented on my studies. Now, to hear it before the ambassador was pleasurable. It added to the warm glow left by the
sake.
They switched to Japanese immediately, the older man looking intently at me to see if I could follow. His accent was slightly rougher than Endo-san’s but, after a few sentences, I sailed with the flow of their conversation.
We were served dinner, which came on little porcelain plates, each with just one or two pieces of food. I enjoyed the marinated eel, the sweetened chicken and the little rolls of raw fish wrapped in rice and seaweed. The two Japanese men ate daintily, examining their food in the chopsticks, commenting on the taste and color and texture, almost as though they were making an artistic acquisition. I was famished and had to restrain myself from eating too much, too fast.
“How is the situation in Penang?” Saotome asked, placing his chopsticks on an ivory rest.
“Quiet and peaceful. Our people are contented and there are no distressing matters,” Endo-san replied. “We have found a suitable house on Penang Hill to lease for our staff and their families. I will show you some photographs later. Apart from that, I have almost unlimited free time and we have been traveling around the island.”
Saotome-san smiled. “Ah, such splendid days, hm?” he said in English. I stopped eating, knowing it was a direct reference to me. Suddenly the old man did not seem so benign. I felt like a mouse before a tiger.
“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said, disregarding all the lessons I had learned and confronting him directly.
“We make a point of knowing our friends,” Saotome said. “I hear your father is the head of the largest trading company in Malaya?”
“Not the largest—that would be Empire Trading.”
“We have some businessmen interested in Malaya. Would your father consider collaborating with them? To be partners with these people? They are keen to obtain a share in your father’s company.”
I thought of what he wanted to know. Deep down, I suspected our future could depend on the answer I gave. I said carefully, “I think he would be willing to listen—after all, he has nothing against your countrymen—but I can’t speak for my father. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
Saotome leaned back and said, “Oh. I suppose we would have to.” He picked up another piece of fish. “Would you consider working for us, once you have finished your studies? I understand you have only another year to go.”
I gave Endo-san a questioning look. “In what capacity?” I asked.
“As an interpreter, a person to liaise with the Europeans and the Malayan people. A goodwill officer, you might say.” Saotome saw my uncertainty. “You do not have to reply now. The work will be interesting I can assure you.”
I promised Saotome that I would consider his offer, and he smiled and said, “Now, would you like to have more of that eel? I saw you were quite, quite hungry.”
The shoji door opened and a soldier knelt and bowed to Saotome. Next to him was a young Chinese girl in a robe, her hair tied into two lacquered balls.
No words crossed the space between us and the kneeling figures until Saotome said, “Lift her face to me.”
The soldier put his fingers under the girl’s chin and brought it up.
“Open her robes.”
The same hand dropped from the girl’s chin and pulled her robes open to one side, revealing a single breast, uncertain of its shape yet, still breaking into womanhood.
Saotome studied her and gave a smile, tiny as a cut. His throat pulsed and his tongue touched briefly the corner of his lips, an artist’s brush adding the final perfecting stroke.
I found the eel did not taste so sweet now.
* * *
For the next few days I was left alone. Endo-san had to attend various meetings with Saotome and I wandered about the streets. I was disappointed, for I had hoped to show him the town and my father’s office. I walked through the commercial center on my own, marveling at the new shops and the crowds of people. Like Penang, the town was segregated into different sections by race. I had to struggle to remember my rusty Cantonese in order to speak to the Chinese here. Unlike the Hokkien Chinese of Penang, almost all of them were immigrants from the province of Kwang-tung, attracted by the tales of wealth and success brought back to China by those of their countrymen fortunate enough to grow rich in the dangerous and soul-sapping tin mines around Kuala Lumpur and the Kinta Valley, where Ipoh was situated.