“Still looking for that puppy?” a guest asked.
“No, we found him. Looking for a waiter now,” I said. We went back into the house, ignoring Isabel, who was waving to us. My grandfather tapped my shoulder. “Something’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, before moving on. I caught Kon’s eye. “There he is.” The waiter was entering the house. We saw his features lit clearly beneath a row of garden lamps, and I knew it was the man at the harbor. We followed him into the house and Kon said, “Go and get our fathers and meet me in the library.”
I nodded and ran outside and found them surrounded by their business acquaintances. My father saw me and I indicated to him to follow. They made their excuses and joined me.
“We’ve found him,” I said. We went back into the house and entered the library. The waiter was sitting on a chair; his cheek was swollen, and his black curly hair, so carefully pomaded, now fell across his brows in greasy claws. Kon carried no weapons, and I marveled at the fear he had incited in the waiter, who tried to burrow deeper into the chair as we closed around him.
“Ramanathan here said he didn’t know what I was talking about,” Kon said. “But he changed his mind. It’s still in the back porch. Go and get it before someone picks it up.”
“I’ll see to that,” Towkay Yeap said and left us quietly.
My father leaned closer to the waiter. “Do I treat my workers so badly that you have to kill us?”
“As long as there are workers and owners, then, yes,” Ramanathan replied.
“That’s your standard reply. I’m more interested in your personal views. Come on, don’t you have a mind of your own?” My father threw up his hands. “Bloody Bolsheviks! Traitors, the whole lot of you!”
The waiter, incensed by my father’s contempt, let out a curse.
“Puki mak!
Call me a traitor? Look at your mongrel son—that’s your traitor!”
Noel hit him, but I caught and held his arm as he raised it again. “What’re you talking about?”
Kon stood up and said, “Listen carefully, Ramanathan. You can tell us everything or I can tell them to leave the room and we can go through the same performance once more. The library is quite well muffled against your screams, with the party and the music outside and, as you can see, there’s no shortage of sharp objects here ...” Kon waved his hands carelessly at Noel’s collection of
keris.
I heard for the first time how hard and cruel Kon’s voice could be, and I remembered how the porridge seller had referred to him as the White Tiger.
“I want money,” Ramanathan said. “You have to understand, when they see the bomb didn’t explode they’ll know I talked. They’ll come after me. I want money and a safe passage to Madras.”
“Fine,” my father said. “I’ll pay you. And I’m quite certain Towkay Yeap can ensure a safe journey for you.”
“Who ordered the bomb to be placed?” Kon asked.
“Who do you think?” Ramanathan said, pointing a finger at me. “Your friends, your Japanese friends.”
I pushed my father aside. “Who? Which friends?” I kept my voice just under control, relieved that it did not show even the faintest quiver.
“You’re such fools, all of you.” Ramanathan shook his head. “They’ll come soon and kick all you Europeans out.”
“Surely you don’t believe their propaganda? That the Japanese want to expel the colonials and return the countries to their rightful peoples? That they want to create their so-called Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to share the wealth of the region? They want it all for themselves, not to share power and wealth with the other nations they have brutalized,” my father said in a tired voice.
“You’re wrong. They’ll free us from you Europeans. And they’ll kill each and every one of you.”
“Who contacted you? What’s his name?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Ramanathan said, giving me a smug, almost pitying smile. “They’re your friends, why don’t you ask them?”
This time it was my father who restrained me from hitting the smiling waiter.
Chapter Twenty
William met us as we came out of the library. “Where have you been? Everyone’s been looking for you. Isabel wants you to meet someone, Father. You too,” he said, catching my arm as I started to move away. We saw Towkay Yeap across the crowd of guests. He nodded his head once, letting us know that the situation had been taken care of. And then Isabel came through the throng of people, and I knew that the man following her was the guest she had asked me to include.
My father’s jaw tightened slightly as Peter MacAllister shook his hand. He was tall and broad-chested, with a slight paunch. Beside him Isabel looked like a little girl. She appeared tense and did not look any easier when our father gave her a smile, since we all knew that he would never embarrass his family in public. For the moment he would be perfectly charming to MacAllister. The stern words would come after the party and yet I somehow felt, this time, Isabel would not be intimidated.
I left them. I couldn’t help wondering if Endo-san had been involved in the attempt on my father’s life. I saw him standing on his own at the edge of the lawn beneath the casuarina tree looking at his island. I refused to believe he had any knowledge of it. It was that simple.
“Your father is a good man,” he remarked, as I joined him. We walked to the side of the swimming pool. I had placed hundreds of oil lamps floating on artificial water lilies in it and their combined glow made the water shimmer. All around, candles had been placed on my father’s collection of statues and they appeared to move like living things as the flames fought the breeze.
The moon was out, paling the stars into insignificance. The lighthouse a mile from Istana slashed its beam out into the endless sea. I made a decision not to tell Endo-san about Ramanathan’s revelations. I used the method of
zazen
to strain out, layer by layer, the noises of the party to pretend that we were the only two people there.
“Philip-san.” A voice came from behind us. It was Tanaka, Kon’s teacher, and I bowed to him.
“Tanaka-san,
konbanwa,”
I said. He returned my greeting and spoke to Endo-san. “How are you? It has been a long time, has it not?”
“I am quite well. Yes, it has been a while. How is Ueshiba-
sensei?”
“I have no news of him, I am afraid. The last I heard from him was just before he moved to Hokkaido.”
“Hokkaido?”
“He wanted to get away from the war, from the generals and the ministers who pestered him daily to teach the army recruits,” Tanaka replied. “He had a message for you, should I meet you.”
Endo-san sighed, as though he had been expecting it.
“He said he understands your actions now but that does not mean he approves of them. You have your duty to your family but you must not stray from the path he has taught. He also said he would always consider you his pupil.”
Endo-san remained expressionless.
“How is your
oto-san?”
Tanaka now went on. I listened carefully, not wishing to miss any part of the exchange of words. Endo-san had never told me a great deal about his father.
“He is recovering from a recent illness. The government treats him well, and provides adequate medicines for him. Thank you for your concern.” Endo-san’s tone of voice made it clear that the subject matter of his father was closed, but Tanaka ignored it.
“Our emperor should never have listened to the generals,” Tanaka said. “Your father was right to stand fast in his beliefs, in spite of the price he has had to pay. So much suffering now. Will the war in China be over soon?”
“I do not know. I hope so.”
“You should return home, my old friend,” Tanaka said.
“I made an agreement with the government, and I will honor it until my father has been released,” Endo-san said. “Tell my family I do not need you to watch over me.”
“I’m not doing it merely for their sake. We are all concerned for you, even those who are outside your family.”
Endo-san failed to reply and it was clear they had reached the end of the conversation. They bowed and Tanaka walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
“You’ve never told me much about your father or your family,” I said.
“One day I shall,” he said, his eyes not moving from Tanaka’s figure. He gathered his thoughts, looked at his watch and said, “Hiroshi-san and I will have to leave soon.”
“You’ll miss my father’s speech. You should stay for that; his speeches are famous for their wit,” I said, watching his face carefully. I felt nauseous suddenly as, against my will, I wondered again if he knew about the bomb.
He shook his head. “We have an early day tomorrow. But thank you for inviting us,” he said.
“I thought Hiroshi-san wouldn’t have accepted.”
“Oh, why not?”
“I insulted him once,” I said, briefly telling him about our conversation at Henry Cross’s home.
Endo-san laughed with an almost malicious glee. “That was very wicked of you.”
“Will Japan invade Malaya?” It was my turn to ask.
He did not hesitate at all. “Yes.”
In one word my world changed. There was no attempt to obfuscate and weave the truth into something palatable like the Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Ramanathan had believed in. “When?”
“I do not know. But it will be swift.” He turned to face the sea. “You need not worry. I will make certain you are safe, and your family as well. But all of you will have to cooperate.”
“You knew it all along, didn’t you?” I said, trying to wrap my anger within me.
His eyes cut into mine and I took a step away.
“What happened to all the ideals you taught me, the ideals taught by your
sensei?
Love and peace and harmony? What happened to them?”
He had no answer. “Your grandfather ...” he stopped, then continued, “I told you once before how we’ve all lived previously. Do you still remember?”
I remembered. After we had returned from the snake temple we took a walk on the beach that had just been washed clean by the receding tide, and as we walked we left behind a trail of footprints in the unblemished sand. He had asked me then, “What did you feel when you met me that first time?”
“As though I’d known you before. I probably recognized you from some social occasion.” But I had known that wasn’t so. No, the feeling had been different. A telescoping of time.
“Indeed we knew each other a long, long time ago, many lifetimes ago. And we’ve known each other for many lifetimes.”
He had stopped, turned around and pointed to the trail of footprints. “We are standing in the present; those are our lives lived. See how our prints cross each other’s at certain places?” He had turned again, and pointed to the vast stretch of unmarred sand. “And there are our lives yet to be lived. And our prints will again cross one another’s.”
“How do you know; how can you be so sure?”
“It comes to me, when I meditate. Glimpses and flashes, and stabs of feelings, some sharp as a katana, others barely felt.”
“How did our lives end?” I had asked, curious in spite of myself.
He had looked out to the sea. A sailing boat was out, balancing on the tightrope of the horizon. “In pain and unfulfilled, without completion. And that is why we are forced to live again and again, to meet, and to resolve our lives.”
I had not really believed his words. I found the idea of not being in control of my own life appalling, like being compelled to laboriously copy out a book someone else had already written. Where was the originality, the excitement of turning the next page and filling it in with something new?
The sounds of the party returned me to the present. “What’s that got to do with the invasion of Malaya?”
“It means we cannot change anything. Everything has already been set out for us.”
“I refuse to believe that,” I said.
“Do you think our meeting each other was merely chance and nothing more? Do you seek to trivialize it?”
I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know. All I know is that your country will soon attack mine.”
“The invasion of Malaya means we are about to become enemies again. That our cycle of pain and our attempt at redemption will soon begin. That is what your grandfather meant.”
He stopped, looking at the guests as they laughed and touched their glasses together. “But I want you to remember one thing, always, even when we appear to be fighting to the death,” he said. “Remember always that I love you, and have loved you for a long, long time.” He reached out his hand and gently touched my shoulder once. He looked up at the house. “That is your room?” He indicated with a lift of his eyebrow to a set of windows facing us.
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”