“Nevertheless, I require a boat from you,” the strange man insisted. “Mine, I am afraid, has been washed away by the tide.” He smiled. “It is probably halfway to India by now.”
I got up from the wicker chair and asked him to accompany me to our boathouse. But he stood, unmoving, staring out to the sea and the overcast sky. “The sea can break one’s heart,
neh?”
This was the first time I heard someone describe what I felt. I stopped, uncertain what to say. Just a few simple words had encapsulated my feelings for the sea. It
was
heartbreakingly beautiful. We stood silently for a few minutes, joined by a common love. There was no movement except for the rain and the waves. Veins of lightning flared and throbbed behind the wall of clouds, turning the bruised sky pink, and I felt I was being granted glimpses of blood pulsing silently through the ventricles of an immense human heart.
“The sea is the only thing that joins me to my home now,” he said, and then looked surprised at having uttered those words.
We walked out into the rain, the grass spongy beneath my bare feet. The boathouse was on the beach, and we climbed down the long flight of wet steps. Once I slipped, and the man’s hand shot out and gripped me tightly. I felt the strength of his arm and stopped struggling for balance. I looked at him and said, “I walk these steps every day. I wasn’t going to fall.”
He appeared amused at my annoyance. I felt the burn where his fingers had clamped onto me and I resisted the urge to rub it. I wondered why he had leased the island.
And then we were on the sand. There was only the roar of the sea and the wind. No other sound existed. Even the birds were gone from the sky. The wind was now stirring up the sea, streaking it white and whipping the unending rain into our faces and hair. At this moment, it was good to be alive.
We hauled out my boat and dragged it down the bay to a spot where it would be easier for him to row across the choppy water. We set it down at the waterline, where the backwash of the waves tugged at it insistently. From this part of the beach I could see only the edge of Istana, like the prow of a great ship rounding a point.
“Thank you for lending me the boat,” he said, giving me a slight bow, which I immediately returned without thinking. He looked back to the island and then turned to me. “Come with me. Let me repay your kindness by offering you a meal.”
He intrigued me, so I stepped into the boat.
He rowed smoothly, the prow slicing through the rough waves. He headed for the beach facing out to the sea, skillfully avoiding the rocks. Once we neared the island he stopped rowing and let the waves lift us and rush us in. We hit the shore with a shudder.
I stepped out into the water and helped him pull the boat onto the beach. The place did not seem to have changed. I looked around and found the tree where I had so often fallen asleep in the hot afternoons and the rock where I dried my clothes. I touched it as I went by.
We left the beach and walked through a clump of trees until we came to a small clearing. I stopped, taking in the one-storey wooden house with a shaded verandah running around it. “You built this?”
He nodded. “I designed it in the traditional Japanese style. Your father provided me with the workmen.”
The lines of the house were clean and simple, blending in beautifully with the surrounding trees. I felt sadness and resentment that the island was now changed by its presence. It was almost as if a large part of my childhood had disappeared without my knowledge, without giving me the time to bid farewell to it.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” I answered and, after a moment, added, “Your home is beautiful.” As I said those words I felt my earlier sadness lifting. If things have to change, if time has to pass, then I was glad he had built this house here.
He went in and lit the lamps, and the sliding doors with their rice paper screens gave off a welcoming glow.
I followed him inside, leaving my shoes outside as he had done. He gave me a towel to dry myself. There was no furniture, only rectangular padded mats around a hearth set into the floor. He lit a brazier, placed a pot over it, and threw in vegetables and prawns. Outside the rain was getting heavier, but I felt warm and protected within the house.
The stew began to boil and steam rose up into the small chimney over the hearth. The smell of it sharpened my hunger. He stirred the pot and, with a wooden ladle, filled two ceramic bowls, handing one to me.
He watched me as I ate. “How old are you?” he asked. I told him.
“And you have not let me know your name,” he said.
“Philip,” I said.
His eyes looked inward, then stared back into mine. “You are the one who was here before me.”
I asked him how he knew.
“You carved your name into one of the rocks here.”
“I used to come here every day after school.”
He studied me carefully, and from the note in his voice I knew he somehow understood my sense of loss. “You are still welcome to do that.”
I was gratified by the invitation. I looked around as we ate. The room was not as bare as I had first thought. A few photographs hung on one wall. There were also two white scrolls that stretched from the ceiling almost to the floor. I could not decipher the writing on them, although I felt strangely soothed by its fluid curves. It was like looking at a flowing river as it twisted and turned on its way to the sea. On the floor between the scrolls a sword rested on a lacquered stand, and there was not a doubt in my mind that he knew how to use it.
A branch hit the side of the house, scraping the roof with its leaves. The rain fell with greater intensity, and from past experience I knew the sea would be choppy and treacherous for my little boat.
“Your family will be worried,” he remarked as we went out and sat on the verandah. He unrolled the bamboo blinds to leave the wind and the rain outside like disfavored courtiers. I sipped the hot green tea he had prepared. I took another swallow, liking the taste of it. I had followed his way of sitting, knees folded, feet tucked under the buttocks. My ankles began to burn with pain but I refused to stretch my legs. Even then, at that stage, I wanted to show him I could endure.
I distanced myself from the pain by listening to the layers of sound: through the clatter of rain hitting the roof I could hear the sea, water dripping off leaves, the chink of china as we lifted our cups and placed them down again.
“There’s no one to worry,” I answered. “My family is in London.”
“And yet you are here.”
I smiled, without much humor. “I’m the outcast. The half-Chinese child of my father. No, that’s unfair,” I said, trying to clarify my reasons for not following my family without sounding resentful. How to explain to this stranger the sense of not being connected to anything? It struck me at that moment that, while other children became orphans when their parents died, my future as an orphan had been cast the night my parents met and fell in love. Finally I said, “I just don’t like London, that’s all. I was there five years ago. It was too cold for me. Have you been there?”
He shook his head. “A dangerous time to be in London.”
“People say all those warnings of war are just talk.”
“I do not agree. War will break out.”
The certainty in his words and a verdict so different from that I had been hearing raised my interest. He was obviously not from these parts. I wondered again who he was and what he was doing in Penang.
I could see one of the calligraphy scrolls through the door. “Where is your home?” I asked.
“A village in Japan,” he said, and I heard the longing in his voice. I thought back to his words earlier in the evening when he said the sea was the only thing that linked him to his home and, although I had only just met him, I felt an inexplicable sadness for him, as though in some mysterious way the sadness was mine too.
A streak of lightning slashed across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. I flinched.
“You should stay here tonight,” he said, rising in one fluid motion. I followed him inside, glad to be away from the spectacle of the storm. He went into his room and came out with a rolled-up mattress, placing it near the hearth.
He bowed to me and I was compelled to return it.
“Oyasumi nasai,”
he said.
I presumed it meant “good night,” for the next moment he had blown out the candles and left me in the darkened room that was lit intermittently by the play of lightning. I unrolled my mattress by the hearth and eventually went to sleep.
* * *
I was awakened by a series of short, abrupt screams. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was. I rose from the mattress and slid open the latticed door. The sun was just hauling itself up from the other side of the world. The sky was still covered with clouds pared thin by the winds and there was a palpable sense of freshness in the air; even the waves hitting the shore sounded crisp and clean.
He was in a clearing beneath the trees, his hands gripping the sword I had noticed the night before. It rose up in an arc described by his hands and descended swiftly, soundlessly, followed by his sharp cry. He was clothed in white robes and a pair of black trousers that looked more like a skirt. He looked very alien and very impressive.
He took no notice of me although I knew he was aware of my scrutiny. The air seemed to vibrate as he slashed, stabbed, sliced, and whirled around the clearing. He had placed a circle of thick bamboo trunks around him and now, in one single motion, the sword cut and the sticks of bamboo fell one after the other. The blade was so sharp there was not even the sound of a crack as it sliced them.
The sky was bright when he finished. His clothes were wet and perspiration made his silver hair shine. He beckoned to me to approach.
“Hit me.”
I hesitated, looking at him uncertainly, wondering if I had heard correctly.
“Go on. Hit me,” he said again in a tone that gave me no choice but to obey.
I launched my fist into his face, using the punch that had stood me in good stead at school whenever I had been called a mongrel half-breed and which had provoked quite a few parental complaints.
I found myself lying on the dew-soaked grass a moment later, my breath knocked out of me. My back felt sore, even though the ground was soft. He pulled me to my feet, his hand firm and strong. There was a look of amusement on his face as he saw my anger. He held up a placatory hand and said, “Come. Let me show you how to do that.”
He asked me to hit him again—
slowly.
As my fist was about to connect with his face he deftly stepped aside and came closer to me. His arm rose up and met mine; with a spiraling motion he guided my hand away, gripped my throat from behind, spun my unbalanced body around and brought me to the ground. Then he let me do it to him, and after several attempts I managed to throw him off his feet. I was enthralled.
“What did you feel?” he asked.
“As though everything came together when I threw you,” I answered him as best I could. If I had wanted to sound pretentious I could have told him it felt as if the earth and I were spinning in harmony. But he seemed happy and satisfied with my reply.
He continued teaching me until it was almost noon. By then I was feeling quite hungry.
“Do you want to continue learning?” he asked.
I nodded. He told me to come again the following day. As we rowed back to the shore he said, “You must be made aware that the teacher, in accepting a pupil, takes on a heavy responsibility. The pupil, in return, must be prepared to commit himself fully. There can be no uncertainty, no second thoughts. Are you able to give me this?”
I stopped rowing as we approached the beach and considered his warning. The sun was hot, breaking onto the surface of the sea, casting shadows and bracelets of white light onto the seabed, making the tidal patterns of sand undulate like heat mirage. I felt that he was telling me more than what was being said, even though I could not catch a firm grasp of the complete picture. I was certain of one thing though. I wanted what he could offer me, and so I nodded.
* * *
I spent the rest of the day thinking about this strange person who had entered my life. The school term had finished for the summer holidays and I was liberated from the monotony of regurgitating Latin verbs and comprehending mathematical formulae. I was in an enviable position: money was hardly a problem as accounts of my purchases were settled monthly by the family firm. The house servants went about their duties and left me alone. We had arrived at an unspoken pact: no negative reports from any one of us to my father. It was an agreement that suited us all.
I would have to be discreet, however, if I wanted to be taught by Endo-san. Most of the servants were Chinese and my friendship with a Japanese could break our pact—the Chinese held no affection for their distant cousins across the seas. My being half Chinese made them assume I was sympathetic to the plight of their families left behind in China—even I knew, from their constant reports, of the atrocities being committed by the Japanese there—but they never knew that I felt no connection with China, or with England. I was a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither. From the very beginning I treated Endo-san not as a Japanese, not as a member of a hated race, but as a man, and that was why we forged an instant bond.