assam laksa
money can buy.”
Everything I knew of my home I had learned from my father.
And I would never see him again.
* * *
Endo-san put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around. I tried not to flinch, but he saw my swiftly hidden expression and let go of me. I went out to the balcony outside my room, its tiles still hot from the day, pleasurable under my feet. The sea was turning red as the sun dropped and his island lay innocent, fired by the light like a pot placed in a kiln. Clouds of birds circled it, flying in from the corners of the sky. Brahminy kites floated on the heated air. Reluctant to return home, they soared endlessly like mythical creatures that never needed to touch the earth, not even once in all their lives.
“Thank you for arranging the funeral,” I said in a formal tone, and bowed to Endo-san. In my mind I still saw those kites in the sky and I envied them.
From within his
yukata
he removed an envelope. “Your father requested writing materials the last time I visited him.”
I received the envelope with both hands. He continued, “You are of course still under house arrest. You are not allowed to leave Istana without my authority. I have your sword in my care. You are not allowed to carry it. Please see to it that you obey these orders. I would find it difficult to intercede on your behalf again.”
He put his arms around me once more and held me in a strong embrace. And then he left me there on the balcony, alone except for a scattering of evening stars.
He appeared on the beach moments later, walking stiffly, leaving smudges on the sand behind him. He pulled his boat down to the water, climbed in, and rowed across to his home.
* * *
I opened the envelope and read the shaky writing and the unwavering words.
Fort Cornwallis Prison
Penang
31st July, 1945
My dearest son,
There are so many things unspoken between us and now time has decreed that we shall never have the moment to voice them.
I was initially distraught at your relationship with Mr. Endo and with the Japanese. They are a cruel people
—
perhaps no more cruel than the English or the Chinese, some would argue
—
but I will never fully comprehend them or their unnecessary savagery. My distress at your closeness with Mr. Endo was somewhat lessened by the influence he has had on you: learn from him, for he has much to impart, but make your own decisions. Do not let your ties to the past
—
or fear of the future
—
direct the course of your life, because, however many lives we have ahead of us to redeem and repair our failings, I feel we have a God-given duty to live
this
life as best we can.
I have known for some time of some of your humanitarian activities
—
the father of your friend often kept me informed of the good you have achieved while working for Mr. Endo. Thus, on the day of my death, I can walk out with my head held high, secure in the knowledge that none of my children
—
not one
—
ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.
Mr. Endo and I have spoken much during these last days. I have finally gained a sense of who and what he is and was and I feel I can trust him with my life. Such different beliefs we have! But having spent all my life out here in the East, I sense more than a grain of truth in his.
I have made a pact with him. He has informed me that he is only able to give one of us a reprieve, because apparently you did strike a terrible blow against the Japanese. I am aware of your repeated requests to see me, but I have asked Mr. Endo not to allow it, for I fear you will sense my eventual intention.
So, time runs on. Already I can hear the crowd outside. I know that in time they too will know the extent of our sacrifice and forgive us our ties with the Japanese. I have never regretted staying behind to defend our home. We have done the right thing and I know that History will judge us fairly and kindly.
My son, grieve if you must but not for too long. I fear for you and the burdens imposed on you by your duty. In the last fragments of my life I truly wish, in spite of my Christian faith, to believe that we will all live again and again so that I may be blessed, perhaps in some future life on the far side of a new morning, to meet you again and to tell you how much I love you.
With the greatest of love,
Your father
I heard his voice clearly, so full of the love he had felt for me, for all his children. I leaned against the balcony railings, all my strength snuffed out as suddenly as a candle flame. The hollowness in me expanded; I shivered all over and clenched my fists as I finally let myself grieve.
Chapter Seventeen
I had to wait a few days after our dinner at the restaurant before Michiko felt strong enough to show me where my father had hidden his collection of
keris.
She now spent all of her days in my house and I had taken to shortening my hours at the office to have more time with her.
“It was cruel of me to show Endo-san’s sword to you. I did not know he had used it to execute your father,” she said one evening after I had finished telling her of Noel’s death. Both of us were in a somber mood. I had not thought about it in such a long time, yet every detail remained so clear.
“I never saw it again after that. I never knew what he had done with it. To hold it in my hand again, after all this time, was a shock to me. I wanted you to leave immediately.”
“And what changed your mind?” she asked.
I took a long time to find a reply that made sense. “I felt that there must have been a reason why you showed up here. And to turn you away seemed a grave disrespect to Endo-san’s memory.”
There was also something else that I had wanted to ask her, and now I felt we knew each other sufficiently well for me to do so. “The bags that you arrived with, they are all that you have left?”
“Yes. I have tidied up all my affairs. My husband’s company is in good hands.”
“It must have been difficult to let it all go.” I was thinking of the time when I too would have to do the same. I had been making the requisite arrangements to trim away the unnecessary strands of my life but I was faltering, not yet ready to take the final step.
“It was necessary,” she replied. “That is what growing old consists of, mostly. One starts giving away items and belongings until only the memories are left. In the end, what else do we really require?”
I examined her words carefully, and the answer came slowly but without any equivocation. “Someone to share those memories with,” I said finally, surprising myself. I had never actually made the decision not to discuss my activities during the Japanese Occupation. The stagnation of my memories and my unwillingness to voice them had happened naturally, coagulated over the years by a combination of guilt, loss, a sense of failure, and the certain knowledge that no one could ever understand what I had gone through.
And at that moment I realized that the corollary to that state of affairs was the loss of my ability to trust, the very cornerstone of aikido. When training as a student in Tokyo I insisted as often as I could on being the
nage,
the one receiving the attack and the one controlling the outcome. This contravened the etiquette of all
dojo,
which requires the equal sharing of opposing roles. It made me unpopular with my fellow pupils, although I viewed my preference as being only the extension of a strong personality, something in which I took pride. When I became an instructor I never ceded the role of
nage
to anyone and I was never again the
uke,
the one who was thrown, where once I had reveled in flight.
This knowledge, like all great and worthwhile enlightenment relating to the human condition, was bittersweet and came too late.
“I appreciate what you are doing. I know it is hard for you,” Michiko said, her gentle tone breaking into my thoughts like the passage of a bird’s low flight across the face of a pond.
I swept her words away with my hand. “It took great courage and strength for you to make the journey here too. I’m glad you came.”
“I took a long time to decide. It was not an act of impulse to come and upset the tranquillity of your life here.” She asked me to help her to her feet. “I shall show you where your father concealed his blades tomorrow morning.”
* * *
She was waiting for me when I finished my morning practice session, her Panama hat shading her face, holding a spade in her hand. I had asked her to train with me daily, and at first she had, but as her strength began to wane she preferred to walk on the beach instead and watch each day arrive.
She took me to the river where we had watched the fireflies, using the spade as a walking stick. Although the sun was shaded by the clouds and we walked beneath the shadows of the overhanging trees, it was a warm morning. Only as we approached the river did the air become cooler. At the frangipani tree my mother had planted she stopped. “Dig around here,” she said.
“How can you be so certain?” I was doubtful, but willing to indulge her.
“The clues were all in what you have been telling me.”
I dug deep into the ground around the tree, taking care not to damage its roots. About four feet down I hit something that sounded metallic. I dropped the spade and scrabbled with my hands and finally loosened a rusted box from the grip of the earth.
It was heavy and it took all my strength to prise the lid open. Inside, wrapped in layers of stiffened oilcloth, were the eight
keris
my father had collected. They were all in good condition, except for a light dusting of rust on their blades. I picked up the
keris
that Noel had purchased from the deposed sultan and dipped it into a bar of sunlight. The diamonds on the hilt fractured the light into the trees and it was as though fireflies were moving through them, competing with the glare of the day. One scale of light danced on Michiko’s cheek.
“I can understand your father’s interest in them,” she said. “They are magnificent. What are you going to do with them?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I shoveled the mound of earth back into the hole. My arms were aching by the time I finished. We sat on the banks, the box between us. There grew in me an inexplicable sadness, which she sensed.
Michiko’s arrival with Endo-san’s
katana
that I had long thought lost, the discovery of my father’s
keris,
all these seemed only to underline to me the inescapable fact that I had never had any choice in the direction of my life. Everything had already been planned for me, long before I was born. My mother’s hopes for me, in her choice of my abandoned name, had not been borne out.
I told Michiko all this and she said, “If it is true, then you are a very blessed man.”
She saw that I did not understand her and she tried to clarify. “To have the awareness that there is a greater power directing our destinies must give great comfort. It would give a sense of meaning to our lives, knowing that we are not running around vainly like mice in a maze. It would soothe me to know that all these,” she tapped her chest, “my illness, my pain and loss, and yes, my meeting you, all have a reason.”
She saw the stubborn set of my face. “I’ve never felt blessed,” I said. “There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?”
“Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?”
It was a question I had never considered.
Chapter Eighteen
Endo-san once said, “All fights revolve around the interplay of forces,” and these words, I began to realize, could also be applied to wars. The balance had shifted and the Allied forces, wearied but stubborn, were advancing steadily against the Japanese. The Halifaxes now visited us daily, alternating bombs with pamphlets that told us of Allied victories. We heard about the kamikaze pilots, warriors of the Divine Wind, but even they could not stop the Allies. Although isolated in Istana, I still caught snippets of news. I could tell how the war was going just by the faces of the servants.
I entered the kitchen and spoke to Ah Jin, the cook. “Go into town and get me a few cans of paint on the black market,” I said, handing her a basket of banana notes and telling her which colors I wanted.
She returned a few hours later.
“Aiyah,
sir, the town going crazy, everyone spend, spend, spend. Fifty thousand Japanese dollars for a loaf of stale bread.” She handed me six tins of paint but I told her to leave them on the landing beneath the attic stairs, along with some brushes.
“Everyone’s getting rid of their banana notes,” I said. “Do you know what that means?”