“You said you’d watch over him,” I said, and the rising anger in my voice could not be controlled. “Let me see him!”
He picked up a document. “You have been accused of passing military and government secrets to the triads. Do you admit this?”
I made no reply, thinking only of my father.
“Which triad? Towkay Yeap’s?”
“It doesn’t matter, Endo-san. The war is lost. It’s time you went home.”
He looked tired suddenly. “I hope so. I want to go home. Once the war is over at least my duty is done.” His voice turned soft and his face followed. “I wish to see Miyajima Island again. I want to walk through the fields where I grew up, the streets where I played, and talk to the people of my village. I just want to go home.”
I felt a sharp stab of sorrow, for his words had struck a soft resonance, like an aged monk gently sounding a bell in a temple far away as I recalled what Kon had said. He too had only wanted to see his home again.
“Let me see my father,” I said, feeling exhausted.
He came closer to me and held out his hand. I hesitated, and then took it. He brought me to him and gently he put his arms around me. I put my face into his chest, and for a few minutes we pretended things were as they had been, before the war.
“My dearest boy,” he whispered.
I pushed myself away from him. “Do your duty. Do it and go home.”
I was taken to Fort Cornwallis, just a short walk away from the offices of Hutton & Sons. In the sort of twist so beloved of history, the Fort, once built to house the British garrison, was now used to imprison the remaining British soldiers and civilians who had not been sent to the Death Railway. The prisoners, thin to the bone, wearing only tattered clothes, watched from the depths of their cells as I was led into the darkness of the Fort.
I called out to my father, I called to the prisoners on either side of my cell, but they had not heard of Noel Hutton. It was only on the day they took me to face the Tribunal set up to hear my crimes that I saw him.
I was grieved by his appearance. He walked like an old man, with small, tentative steps, no longer sure of his path. But when he was placed next to me, he gave a shadow of his old smile and asked, “You did what had to be done?”
“Yes, Father. Did they hurt you?”
He shook his head. “They treated me with great civility. Largely, I think, due to Mr. Endo’s intervention.”
The Japanese never did things in half measures. Throughout my association with them I had seen the lengths they would go to just to prove their point. So it was with my punishment.
Hiroshi decreed that the evidence against me, which consisted mainly of Goro’s testimony, was overwhelming. I had passed information to the enemy and I had played a part in the murder of Saotome, whose body had been thrown into the entrance of the Kempeitai headquarters in Ipoh even while I had been wandering around lost in the jungle. I was to be executed in the field outside the Fort. Noel Hutton was to be imprisoned for harboring me, for being the father of a traitor.
I steeled myself to receive the expected judgement with equanimity for my father’s sake. When I turned to look at him he nodded once to himself and I saw in his face the same expression he always had whenever his commercial negotiations reached an impasse. During those negotiations he would often find a solution, but not now. There was none.
“I’ll find a way to get you out,” he said.
I wondered if his mind had been affected. His eyes were extraordinarily bright, shining with a certainty I felt was misplaced. He spoke to Endo-san. “You know the war is as good as over, yet still you persist in carrying out this travesty—this perversion.”
“My duty continues right to the end of the war,” Endo-san replied, before we were led out into the sun and taken back into the lightless world of the Fort.
* * *
Endo-san visited me daily. I asked to be allowed to see my father but I was refused. On the last evening of the day before I was to be executed, I knew the restraints I had bound over my emotions would soon break. I felt time draining away and there was nothing I could do to halt it.
Endo-san came later than usual that day. The lock rattled and the door was opened. I stood up from the wooden pallet that was my bed as Endo-san entered.
“Let me see him,” I said.
“You will see him tomorrow,” he said. “Do not worry about your father. He is well. I have been speaking to him these past few days. I have just come from his cell.”
“What did he say? Did he have a message for me?”
Endo-san shook his head.
In spite of myself I had been hoping that my father could somehow put everything right again, as he had done when I was a child. But I was on my own now.
“Will you make sure he is safe? That no harm comes to him?” I asked.
“I will ensure that he has what he requires,” Endo-san said.
“I do not want to see him tomorrow,” I said. “I do not want him to be there. Can you at least see to that?”
“I will try,” he said. “I have also requested the return of your sword to me.”
“I never used it to kill,” I said. I should have, I thought. I should have sliced Yong Kwan’s throat. Perhaps then Kon would still be alive.
“That is good,” Endo-san said.
“So it is ending the way it always has,” I said. “In a way, you will be killing me again.” I had to fight with all my strength not to collapse under my fears but he saw my struggle.
“Would you like me to stay here with you tonight?”
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
Chapter Sixteen
News travels fast in a small place like Penang. I remember how everyone used to be related, or connected, or knew each other. Somehow we always knew if a man was having an affair or if a woman loved her drink too much. Once I played truant and spent the day in the streets of Georgetown. When I returned home that evening my father was waiting for me. I had been seen and the news was passed to someone who then felt bound to let him know.
I was certain the
Jipunakui
had also helped in letting the people know of the fates of the last of the Huttons. On the day I was brought to the field outside Fort Cornwallis a crowd had already gathered, restless and eager. My father was there, and my heart sank. So Endo-san had failed me in spite of my pleas.
The crowd’s reactions were mixed. Many perceived me as a traitor who had collaborated with the Japanese. These jeered and threw stones at me and were immediately dragged out by the Japanese soldiers and beaten. Once again, I thought, how could we ever understand these savage, cultured, brutal, yet refined people?
There were some in the crowd whom I had helped and they stood in silence. In the mass of faces I thought I saw Towkay Yeap’s and I wished I could tell him about Kon, how he had longed to come home.
I shifted between times, seeing my mother as she lay dying beneath her sheets, seeing Aunt Mei smile at me as we sat in her house. I saw Endo-san the day he took me to his island but we rowed on and on and then he was gone, and I was left alone on my boat, the oars somehow in my hands. I closed my eyes and attempted to harness whatever strength remained in me.
When it was read out that I had passed information to the secret societies the jeers were silenced and, like the whisper of a breeze the crowd started chanting our family name. The sound swelled and filled the sky, strong as the monsoon winds. Goro fired a few shots into the air but the sullen silence that descended was even more powerful than the chanting.
The once immaculate padang where people had played cricket was littered with stones and bald patches of sand showed through the dry grass. In the middle of it was a square of blinding-white sand, perfectly raked. A wooden post had been planted in its center, jutting out like a desiccated tree trunk in the desert. I was made to kneel on the sand and Goro tied me to the post. I held my father’s eyes in mine and whispered, “Forgive me. You shouldn’t be here.”
He shook his head gently. “You did what you had to do, what you could do.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” I felt the closeness of tears behind my eyes and I resolved not to let anyone see them.
Endo-san walked up to me. Time seemed to turn around again, for was he not in the very same clothes I had seen him wearing, when I was deep in
zazen,
as he prepared to cut me centuries ago? The black robes with the beautiful gold trimmings looked similar; only this time his hair was short, he did not have a top-knot, and in his hand he held his Nagamitsu sword.
He stood before me. It was true. It was happening, time was running backward. There on his face was the same expression I had seen then. I felt faint, yet there was no fear, only a recognition that he had been right all along. He said to me: “Your father will die. But you will live.”
“No! That was not what I asked of you!”
He turned to look at my father. I saw them exchange glances and I knew that another agreement had been made, one that had excluded me. They brought my father next to me and he knelt heavily; I could even hear the popping of his joints. I pulled at my ropes and screamed at Endo-san.
“It’s no use shouting. There’s nothing you can do to change this,” my father said softly. “Show some dignity before the people of Penang.”
I stopped my struggle. “Why?”
He gave me his beautiful smile but he chose not to reply. Instead he asked, in an almost childlike voice, “Will it hurt?”
“No,” I said. From the depths of my knowledge, of my lives lived, I could say to him, “It won’t hurt. They’ll do it properly.”
And then the crowd began to whisper our name again, like a wave beginning far out at sea, growing in strength as it surged toward the shore. Endo-san gave a warning to Goro and the Japanese soldiers not to fire their weapons. The chanting
“Hutton! Hutton!”
rolled on, increasing in volume and emotion.
“Listen to that!” my father said. “Make our name live on. Let it always have those qualities associated with it. Only the good.”
Endo-san removed my father’s chains and made him comfortable. Goro, feeling cheated, protested but Endo-san said, “He dies a free man.”
My father squeezed his wrists and then placed them behind his back. How often had I seen him walk, enjoying his garden, with his hands clasped behind him? He straightened his back and lifted his chin.
Endo-san stood up, bowed his head for a moment and unsheathed his
katana.
It came out silently, like a ray of sunlight piercing through a bank of rain-cloud and just as brilliant. He bowed low to my father. “I would be honored if you would allow me to complete this.”
My father dipped his head in assent and then opened his eyes, which blazed brighter than I had ever seen them. He looked up to the sun, now rising rapidly, feeling its warmth for the last time. The clock tower struck half past nine as the morning wind cooled our burning faces and lifted his hair.
He reached across and stroked my head. “Never forget you are a Hutton. Never forget you are my son.”
Endo-san bowed again and raised his sword. I recognized that stance.
Happo.
Both hands brought to the right shoulder, feet planted firmly on the ground, the sword raised like the purest voice to Heaven. The chanting of the crowd quickened and I found my lips moving along to the cadence of our name.
I forced myself to watch. I told myself that I would not turn away, that I would be with my father to the end. Endo-san took a breath in and brought the blade down. The crowd was silenced. High up in the sky, unseen, a squadron of Halifaxes could be heard on their daily run.
Endo-san arranged for my father to be buried in the grounds in Istana, next to William’s memorial stone, and not displayed publicly as Hiroshi and Fujihara had wanted. Days after his death I was led out of Fort Cornwallis, weak and half blinded by the light reflecting off the walls, the godly light of Penang that I loved so much. I had not eaten anything and the water left daily by Endo-san had stagnated as I lay curled in a corner. I did not speak to Endo-san during his visits and left his questions unanswered.
I was released and placed under house arrest, which meant I was restricted to Istana and in Endo-san’s custody.
“Did Hiroshi order my release?”
“Hiroshi-san is dying. I issued the order.”
As we drove to Istana I wound down the windows and, for the first time in days, I breathed clean, true air. I still could not feel anything of the layers of events piling upon each other.
I had slept badly in my cell, pursued by vivid dreams and memories. Now, as we drove along the winding coastal road I felt my wounds being soothed by my old friend, the sea. How many times had I made this journey with my father? He was often a source of the most bizarre information—”There’s that tree where the branch fell on the resident councillor’s car and broke his wrists”—”That house there has an underground secret passageway leading to the beach”—”That stall serves the best