“My family’s life. My life. You know where we are. If I betray you, I know we would have nowhere to run. Your son would vouch for me.”
He kept silent, looking out to sea, his robe fluttering in the wind. He seemed to have aged a great deal since the last time I saw him. There was a frailty in him, common in much older men, which I had never seen before. It was a form of fading away, as though he had fewer and fewer elements within him for the light to catch and reflect into my vision. I had heard from the Japanese informers that he was still continuing his visits to the opium dens.
“I do not want my family harmed in any way. I want to make it clear to you that I cannot stop working for the Japanese. They have made threats of harm and imprisonment against my family. I also ask that you put the word out to the resistance that the threats to my family and me are to cease.”
He nodded in agreement. “Very well. We will order the warnings to stop.”
“I’ll do my part,” I assured him.
“You are too young to be doing this,” he said.
“The war does not choose its victims. Kon is doing his part too.”
“Yes, he is,” the old man said, a sad and distant gaze coming into his eyes. He missed his son so much.
“Have you news of him?”
He seemed unwilling to tell me, wondering if he could trust me. “For myself, I would prefer not to disclose my son’s location,” he said. “Before he left, however, he insisted I should let you know. He is in a camp just outside Ipoh. The guerrillas have joined forces with the Malayan Communist Party. His group has been successful in disrupting the
Jipunakui
activities.” He shook his head. “I hope they do not become too successful, for that is when the
Jipunakui
will really hunt them down.”
He walked to the side of the trawler, the water churned to a milky white by the prow. “Please thank your father for his contribution to the fund ordered by the
Jipunakui,”
he said. “I know he did not want it made public.”
“I was against him paying it,” I admitted.
“The fact that he paid is one of the reasons why the threats against you and your family were never seriously carried out. Your father, at least, is a true son of the island.”
He beckoned to me to join him at the railing. We gazed down into the water and I pulled back almost involuntarily. The sea was a translucent and enticing green but floating just below the surface was an armada of pale, transparent jellyfish, many of them the size of a small opened umbrella and trailing tentacles almost ten feet long. They appeared at certain times of the month and were one of the hazards of swimming in the waters around the island. I had encountered them many times before, but not in such number—there must have been close to a thousand of them around us. I watched their heads pulsate as they drifted with the currents, remembering the time when I had been stung in my leg while swimming. The pain had been excruciating and I had barely made it back to shore.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Towkay Yeap said. “A man could survive a sting from one of these but he would never make it through all of them if he fell in.”
“There’s no reason for anyone to fall in,” I said, meeting his eyes.
“Let us hope so,” he replied.
* * *
I rowed to Endo-san’s island beneath the fading sun and the multiplying stars, enjoying the pull and yield of the oars. For once the trip felt unending, as though I were rowing in a viscous dream, all movement slowed. Part of me realized I had entered the deepest state of
zazen
and that I was not holding the oars anymore.
I was kneeling in a field, a field so green, so new with rain that the grass gave off an emerald luminescence. A slight wind bent the tops of the trees, lifting the scent from them, sending it to me. I knew the sea was within reach, for its gentle promise floated on the scent of the trees. And above me I could almost hear the scraping of the clouds’ slow movement against the sky. The light was unnaturally bright and the contrasts sharp. A shadow moved into the sun and I lifted my head to look into Endo-san’s face. My breathing was stilled, for his face was suffused with both love and sorrow, mingling like the wind and the rain. He was attired in a formal black
men-tsuke
robe, its sleeves and edges lined with a discreet border of muted gold. On his shoulders were his crests and I knew he was one of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu’s
daimyo,
a warlord. His hair was white, pulled back into a samurai topknot, and his arms held a
katana
so beautiful it seemed to be alive.
He raised it up in the
happo
stance, both hands going to his right shoulder, his legs bent outward at the knees. A crowd had gathered around the field and banners whipped frantically on the wind: their fluttering sounded like the beating wings of cranes about to take flight to a far-off summer.
He spoke and his voice carried across the field. “For conspiring against Tokugawa-Shogun, you have been sentenced to death. You have been denied the right to
seppukku.
Your family have had their titles and properties confiscated and all have been executed.”
But his eyes, oh his eyes! They spoke of other things, of things that had been between us, and things that could now never be. His mouth tightened into a firm, remorseless line, hard as the blade of the sword he now gripped high over his head. But in the depths of his tear-filled eyes I saw his love for me.
I raised my neck, exposing it to the arc of his cut. And then I gathered my trembling voice so I could speak clearly and firmly:
Friends part forever
Wild geese lost in clouds.
It was from a haiku by Matsuo Basho, his favorite poet.
I felt him breathe and then his
katana
seemed to trap a ray of the sun within the blade as it sliced down, and the next moment I was above the field, this timeless field. I saw my body as it collapsed slowly into a curled position and Endo-san crouching over it. Even through the veil that separates life from death I could feel his sorrow. I wanted to console him, to tell him not to feel such sadness, but it was beyond my strength now to reach him.
* * *
I sat back in the boat; my hands clenched the oars and a film of sweat chilled my face. I was on the beach of Endo-san’s island, unaware of how I had gotten there, every segment of my body shaking as though trying to tear apart from one another. My neck burned with remembered pain and I choked as I tried to breathe. I opened my eyes and saw him standing beside me, concerned. His hand reached out and gently stroked a line down the side of my neck where in the seventeenth century he had cut me. The skin convulsed when his fingers touched it. Silence, only the sound of the waves and the creak of the boat.
“Are you feeling ill?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, the word riding on my long exhalation. I knew then, though I found it difficult to accept, that there was more to life than this life. That in all our incarnations I had loved him, and that that love had brought me pain and death: time after time; life after life.
“Now do you see?” he asked me gently.
“Why was I executed? What did I do?”
“You betrayed the Shogun’s government by providing information to the rebels.”
I did not want to believe what had just happened to me, for to accept it would be to acknowledge that my grandfather had been right when he explained the origin of my name in his house on Armenian Street. But the entire experience had been so real and I was still shaken by the vestigial sorrow within me.
“Through how many lifetimes have we pursued one another? Two? Three?” I asked tentatively.
“Does it matter?”
I shook my head. “All that matters is this life, Endo-san. To have the will to make the right decisions.”
He helped me out of the boat. “It is better that you work for us, you know. I can only protect you if you are useful to Hiroshi-san. It is not that I approve of what the army is doing, but Hiroshi-san is correct—all transitional periods are tumultuous and can only be controlled by a show of strength. If we showed weakness, we would never last long.”
“Would Ueshiba-sensei approve?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“It is my duty and my fate. Why, of all the places I have traveled to—China, India, even the foothills of the Himalayas—why did I end up here? Because you are here; because the time has finally come to redress our lives.
“This time,” he said, holding my shoulders firmly, “this time there will be balance and harmony. That is why I have been training you so hard, why I have driven you so harshly. So that you may be a match for me.”
He let go of me. I took a step back and stumbled on the sand. “I will never raise my hand against you, Endo-san.”
“No? Not even if your family is threatened, hurt, even killed? Do not make promises you cannot keep.”
That evening he used his
katana
against me in his violent ways and I responded in kind. There was so much anger and so much fear, they fueled our movements and our release. He attacked me again and again, pressing into me, sinking into me with such intensity, as though he wanted to imprint a part of him in me, to leave a portion of his soul in mine. My sword received his force with equal hunger and I opened myself up to him as clouds open up to the sun.
Chapter Eight
It was raining, a soft thrumming on the world. From the window I could see Penang Hill and its lower ranges wreathed in a misty shawl. Dark, heavy clouds rolled over the ridges like surf breaking over sea boulders. The bungalows, which could be seen perched on the Hill on clear days, lay submerged beneath the clouds like shells covered by the tide, as though preferring to cut themselves off from the town below, choosing not to acknowledge the presence of the Japanese who by now had been occupying the country for close to three years. I, however, had no such option.
I was in my office when the file was handed to me by a clerk. I had no idea what the words
Sook Ching
meant. But as I continued reading the report the intent became clear. Hiroshi had received the papers an hour ago. In the background I heard the female clerks talking, and the pecking sounds of typewriters and ringing telephones. Except for the fact that the voices were speaking Japanese, I could have been in the offices of Hutton & Sons, preparing an order for a shipment of rubber.
I felt cold, and it was not due to the endless rain. I read the report again. Under the
Sook Ching
exercise, Chinese businessmen and villagers suspected of being members of anti-Japanese groups were to be rounded up and sent to labor camps. Every state in Malaya had orders to carry out the exercise. It was the retribution of the Japanese against the strong opposition shown by the local Chinese against the war in China.
Hiroshi entered my room. “Have you read the report? Direct orders from General Yamashita.”
I nodded. He handed me another sheaf of papers. “These are the first batch of names. Copy them and send them to Fujihara-san, please.”
“Yes,” I said, but my mind was already searching for a way to save the people on the list.
I rushed through the day and as soon as I finished I arranged for another meeting with Towkay Yeap. We met as usual on the trawler, although we had to be wary as Japanese naval boats were patrolling the seas.
“These are the names of people who will be arrested by tomorrow.” I recited a list of ten names I had memorized; they were all middle-aged Chinese businessmen. I saw Towkay Yeap recoil at the mention of each one. He was probably on good terms with them. He would wonder when his own turn would arrive, when I would come to him and utter his name.
“All were on the list published by the
Straits Times
—they petitioned against the Japanese invasion of China,” he realized immediately.
“You have to get them away,” I told him.
“That would put you in danger. Fujihara would know there’s a leak.”
“I have to run that risk,” I said.
“We’ll have to hurt you. That’s the only way,” he said.
I understood. Until now, due to his intervention, I had been relatively safe from assaults and harassment from the anti-Japanese movement. They had orders to stay away from me. That had to change.
“Send your best men,” I said. “Only then will it look believable.”
“Are you that good?” he asked.
“I beat your son once.”
That stopped him short. A look of respect entered his eyes. “Then I shall use my best people. Make sure you do not injure them too seriously.”
* * *
Fujihara was more cunning than I was. He moved that very night, but Towkay Yeap had managed to warn three of those on the list and they left the island before the Kempeitai came to drag them away. I saw his fury the following morning, when he came into my room.
“Who did you show the list of names to?” he shouted at me.