The road was lined with magnificent homes dating back to the 1920s. Many had been demolished, but in the geography of my memory I saw them every day, entire, complete, standing proudly in a row. And in my memory I recalled the people who had lived there, who had passed through those homes; the scandals and the tragedies of their lives.
All gone. Even I could not buy up all these buildings. Now the homes had become wine bars, coffee shops, eating places, seafood restaurants charging exorbitant prices, and shopping malls.
“You love this island intensely,” she said.
“I used to love this place. Now, I feel disconnected from it,” I said. “It’s another world now. We have to make room for the young. Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so much of my money and time buying old houses and restoring them. I want to delay the inevitable.”
We got up, walked back to the car, and drove to the center of town, crossing Kimberley Street and its many shops selling joss sticks and Teo-Chew food, into Chulia Street and then heading into narrower and smaller streets. Between Campbell and Cintra Streets was the section once known as
Jipun-kay,
Japan Street. I was moving back in time as we parked and walked, for it was here that Endo-san first took me to lunch, I told Michiko. There were, before the war, geisha-houses in the area, as well as an unusual profusion of camera shops, which had made the locals suspect that they were fronts for spying activities.
My words to Endo-san in the early days of our acquaintance come back to haunt me every day:
I want to remember it all.
And I have done so, as Isabel had foreseen. I’ve been blessed with the gift of memory. It has helped that the island has not changed much, not in this part of town anyway. Some days I walk along these streets and lanes, hear the sounds, taste the smells, and feel the heat of the sun, and when I turn to tell Endo-san something, I realize with a shock that I’m not in the past anymore. The owners of the shops—the narrow Indian stores selling used books supplied by backpackers returning home, the budget hotels and Internet cafés, the rattan store where I bought my walking stick, the owner thoughtfully sawing off the end to fit my stride—all recognize me.
I have become a fixture. I’m often surprised that the guidebooks don’t list me as one of the features of these streets and alleys—an old man, hair all white, walking up and down these aged and ageless streets, searching, searching, looking for something that can never be found again.
* * *
We came out from La Maison Bleu, the former mansion of Cheong Fatt Tze, and thanked the caretaker for giving us a tour inside. The sun bleached the indigo walls, turning them powder-dusty. “That’s Towkay Yeap’s house,” I said, pointing down the street to show her. I took her arm and led her there.
“I bought it a few years ago and since then have attempted to do what the people of La Maison Bleu have done. You saw how they’ve made the old house look as though Cheong Fatt Tze would hold parties there again and maybe even take his ninth or tenth wife? Well, that’s my intention for Towkay Yeap’s house.”
Penelope Cheah was waiting for us. I introduced her to Michiko. I stood quietly as the restoration architect opened the latticed doors. I did not know what to expect. But then the doors were pushed open and I was back—back to the day when I first visited Kon. Everything was as it had been. The architect had delved into the depths of my recollection to recreate the house and I knew she had also scoured the records of the Penang Museum and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for photographs and paintings to guide her. On the wall by the doors an incense holder held a joss stick, the smoke sending a curling message to the God of Heaven.
I stood on the threshold, suddenly afraid. Michiko took my hand and said, “Go in, it has been waiting for you.”
I held on to Michiko’s hand and stepped inside and stopped in the Hall of Guests. A large wooden screen, carved with a thousand detailed figures and leafed in gold, barred all outsiders from the house within. Red lanterns hung from the eaves of the ceiling and square wooden pedestals inlaid with mother-of-pearl supported vases and jade figurines. The tiles felt cold under my bare feet when I removed my shoes and I began to cool down from the heat outside.
On one side hung Towkay Yeap’s portrait and even as I turned my heart knew what I would see. Kon’s picture faced his father’s and once again I saw him, with his youthful smile, his black shining eyes, dressed all in white with his favorite red tie.
“Where did you find that?” I asked.
“In one of the vaults at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce,” Penelope Cheah said. “Placed there by his father.”
“Is that your friend, Kon?” Michiko asked, moving forward.
“That’s him.”
“He looks very familiar,” she said.
“Probably because you’ve been hearing so much about him,” I said.
I went into the courtyard where the sun came in and stood by the spiral staircase. The wrought-iron railings were new, but almost like the ones Towkay Yeap had used. I heard the female voices of his household, the
amahs
chattering in the kitchen, the sound of the steel cleaver on the chopping block as lunch was prepared, and I caught the smell of glutinous rice steaming as a soft wind blew through the house. A dog barked at my presence, and a male voice scolded it:
“Diamlah!”
I went up the stairs, into Kon’s room.
Sorry about the mess. I have a large collection of books of Chinese history and art.
I turned suddenly and furrowed my brow. “What is it?” Penelope Cheah asked from behind me. I held up my hand to silence her.
Do you think my meeting him, and our meeting, all of it was by chance?
I waited for his reply.
Some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, all our lives until eventually we forget why we began paying in the first place.
And then, like a kind god completing my spell, a peddler cycled by outside, and once more I heard the cries of the hawker and the knocking of his wooden clappers as he pedaled his pushcart past the house, selling wonton noodles.
I have missed you, my friend.
As
I have you.
* * *
In a well-known Nyonya restaurant we sat down for an early dinner. The food, like the Chinese immigrants who had come to Malaya in the days of British rule and who had assimilated the ways and customs of the Malays, was a mixture of Malay and Chinese cuisine. The Nyonya Chinese had a reputation for creating excellent dishes and I have never tasted anything resembling them anywhere in the world. I watched in anticipation as Michiko’s face expressed amazement, delight, wonder, and enjoyment as she tasted the Curry Kapitan Chicken, with its light coconut-milk gravy, as she nibbled at
otak-otak
and
jeu-hoo-char
—all washed down with hot jasmine tea. She tasted all of the dishes but I noticed that she had only taken small portions onto her plate; I hoped the day had not been tiring for her.
“I really cannot eat much since I fell ill. But this food is delicious,” she said. “No wonder I’ve been told that the most popular pastime here is eating.”
“Another reason why I am tied to this place,” I said and smiled at her.
“You should smile more. You look much, much younger.”
The restaurant was run by three ladies, and Mary Chong, the youngest among them, stopped to talk to us when she brought us our pot of tea. She, too, knew me from a long time ago. But Cecilia, the older partner, scowled when she saw me, and went into the kitchen.
“How’s business?” I asked the usual question. The place looked dingy and well-worn. I remembered when they opened, almost twenty years ago. Wherever I traveled to, the first stop I made when I returned was at this restaurant.
“Not so good,” she sighed. “All those new American coffee places attract the youngsters. We get the usual crowd, mostly. You we have not seen in some time, although we have heard things about you.”
“Yes, Mary. The rumors are true. I’m gradually drinking myself to death.”
“Then you should just eat yourself to death in our restaurant. I’m sure the food here tastes better than your sauvignon blanc.”
I raised an eyebrow. They got that part correct. Michiko laughed.
Mary continued in a more somber tone to Michiko, “You’re a Japanese, aren’t you? Did Philip tell you he saved my husband’s life in the war?”
“Damn it all, Mary,” I said.
“You’re not going to stop me,” Mary said. “I tell it to everyone I know, to all the tourists who come in here. Many people think he was a Japanese collaborator in the war, but he saved my husband’s life, as well as many of my neighbors.”
“Not many people think like you do,” I said. “And they have good reason. You know why Cecilia refuses to serve me.” Michiko, I knew, had noticed Cecilia’s exit. “I was with the Japanese when they pulled her father out and killed him. I had to read out the names of the condemned.”
“They don’t know you,” Mary’s reply came quick and certain.
“This is the last time I’m coming here to eat,” I said.
“Ha! You always say that, but you won’t find another place like mine and you know it,” Mary said and, knowing she had had the last word, returned to the kitchen.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Michiko.
She shrugged her thin shoulders, not bothering to hide her amusement. “How did you save her husband?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I had no wish to talk about it. It was warm in the restaurant, and I was starting to perspire from the tea.
“Now you know what happened to my father’s butterflies,” I said. “But I never discovered what happened to his collection of
keris
blades. He hid them too well before our house was ransacked by the Kempeitai.”
“Have you searched the house for them?”
“Every inch of it, without any success. Maybe they were taken away by the Kempeitai after all. Ownership of weapons was prohibited during the Occupation. Like feudal Japan.”
There was a distant look on Michiko’s face, which made me concerned. “What’s the matter, are you ill?”
She shook her head. “I think I know where your father concealed the blades.”
I did not believe her at all but sought to humor her. “Where? Tell me?”
“I will not. But I will show you,” she replied. She refused to reveal anything further and, after a while, she requested that I continue with my tale.
Chapter Thirteen
The journey from Butterworth to Ipoh took three hours, as we stopped frequently for checks of the rails. The MPAJA’s favorite targets had been railway lines and major roads, as well as army camps and mines. Anything to disrupt the Japanese, I thought.
I was tight with fear. As tiny Malay villages and one-street towns dropped behind me, I questioned my courage. Which of us was the stronger? Kon, who had given up everything he had ever known to fight the Japanese, suffering untold hardship and the possibility of death every day? Or myself, who had accepted the Japanese, their conquest and rule, and who tried to live day-today in safety? Who had made the correct decisions?
More and more often now it occurred to me that Kon was living the life I should have lived, making the choices I should have made. He had taken the proper turnings, made the appropriate stand, while I had done otherwise. He would return from the war a hero, welcomed by everyone—and what would they say of me?
The railway station in Ipoh, a large cream building flanked by towers topped with Moorish minarets and cupolas, was quiet. A small group of Indian men sat reading newspapers in their white
dhoti
and vests, as doves floated to the steel crossbeams and shadowed alcoves. The town however was busy with trishaws and bicycles. I paid for a room at the station hotel and hired a trishaw to my grandfather’s home.
After knocking on the doors for some time, I realized the house was empty. I walked around to the back but found only a tool shed and the servants’ rooms. I stood in the sunshine, wondering what to do next. I opened the tool shed, hoping to find what I needed. There was a bicycle leaning against the wall, rusty, heavy, and high. I adjusted the seat, and cycled out into the limestone hills of Ipoh.
I hid the bicycle and walked up the slope, trying to recollect the path my grandfather had shown me. At the top I almost missed the temple, for the walls had begun to merge into the color of the cliffs. I waited outside and shouted for him. After a while, when no one appeared, I pushed aside the guava tree, now grown big enough to make the effort difficult, and entered the abandoned temple. A squirrel paused in washing its face, glared at me for daring to disturb it and ran up the walls into a crack. I walked into the passageway and came out into the enclosed circle and there he waited, his familiar roguish smile causing me anguish.
“I have missed you,” he said and the sound of his voice and the twinkle in his eyes made me realize I had missed him greatly as well. I approached him and found I could not meet his gaze.