He opened the
katana
a notch and I thought I heard a sigh, an exhalation of breath coming from it. Even in the dimness of the house it seemed to snatch a sliver of sunlight from outside and throw it into the room, lighting it with disdain. He sheathed it and placed it on the mat before me.
We changed into our cotton
gi
and black
hakama
and we went through the ritual of tying the cords around our waists, each stroke, each insertion and pull and knot signifying the movements of the universe. The back piece of the
hakama
pushed into the small of my back, forcing me to stand up straight.
I picked up my sword, my Nagamitsu sword, brother to Endo-san’s, crafted by the same swordsmith. It had a comforting weight. I slid the blade open an inch, as Endo-san had done. There was now a point of light in the shadowed room, the sole star in a universe of darkness. I pushed the sword back into its scabbard and it went in without a sound.
We went out into the sandy enclosure where my physical lessons had always been conducted, the lessons that had given me so much, but had demanded so much more in payment. As my bare feet touched the cool, damp sand, the memory of those lost days surrounded me and the enormity of what I had to do hit me like a blow.
“I cannot do this,” I said.
He lost his temper. “Do not be a child! You ceased to be one the day you became my pupil.” A sigh leaked out from him, tired and despairing. “If you fail to complete what is necessary, we shall have to go through all the pain and suffering again. You will have failed me.” He knelt on the sand and, for the first time since I had known him, he appeared defeated.
I held the sword in my hand and stood there without moving for a long time. I remembered that day on the ledge up on Penang Hill, and I had to accept that he was correct, finally, at this point. I had to extend my trust in him another step forward, into another life.
I went into the house and came out with a towel. I knelt before him and gently cleaned his face; he sat there, turning his face this way and that to facilitate me. The sun had found a hole in the clouds and the sand gleamed brightly, white as angel bones.
He lifted a fistful of sand and let the breeze carry it away.
“Shirasu,”
he whispered, as though giving voice to the slipstream of escaping sand.
When I had finished he reached out and touched my face.
“So much to tell you,” I began to say, but he silenced me.
“Do you think we still need words, after all this time?” he asked.
I shook my head. He pulled me to him and held me tightly. Then he kissed my cheek, his hand stroking my head. I wanted to capture every element of him, every scent, every feel. And I tried to, but it was so hard. I infused my lungs with his smell, trying to lock it there. I opened every nerve in me to feel him, to imprint the sensations within me forever. But of course it was futile.
He pushed me away gently as I struggled to hold on to him. “Let go,” he said. “Let me go.”
I knew he was right, so I released him. I picked up my sword and went into the ancient
happo
stance. He closed his eyes and said into the wind,
“Friends part forever
Wild geese lost in clouds.”
My hands stopped trembling and I felt him steadying me, guiding me. The purest, clearest emotion I would ever experience filled me. A golden light sang within me and I felt it all the way to the tip of the sword. I closed my eyes and absorbed the beauty of the moment. Then I opened them again, saw his gentle smile and met his eyes for the last time.
Endo-san was right. In the end, we fellow travelers across the continent of time, across the landscape of memory, we did not need words.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was done, this tale of mine. I stood up heavily. I was sore: my body, my bones, my heart.
“You did not fail him,” Michiko said. Tears glazed her cheeks.
I could not find the answer to that. As I wiped my sword clean, sheathed it, and knelt beside his body, I felt very certain that I had not disappointed Endo-san. After all, I had risen to the occasion, as he had demanded, as he had prepared me to. Yet as the years passed, a sense of failure had gradually corroded that feeling of certainty.
“Will you do the same for me?” she asked when I did not speak.
I had not anticipated that, and I moved away from her, pretending to polish my empty cup with a cloth. “I will not.”
She was surprised. “Why?”
I was suddenly angry with her for placing me in a quandary. “Has my telling you of Endo-san’s life not indicated anything to you?”
“It has shown me that you are willing to perform the ultimate duty for a friend, for someone who holds your highest affections.”
I shook my head. “I would never again do what was asked of me. Not a day goes by when I do not in some way regret my actions.”
“You had no choice. It was all determined a long time ago. Accept that. Endo-san did. So did your grandfather.”
“I cannot accept it. It is too easy. We all have the power to choose. I made a series of wrong choices and it all culminated here, on this island, with Endo-san kneeling before me.”
“You had two roads to walk on and they had been created before you set foot on them. Does not the Christian God say,
There is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done?”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Isaiah, Chapter Forty-six, verse Ten,” she replied, quick and sure. “It goes on:
My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure
... I
have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.”
I went to a chest carved from Paulownia wood and opened its lid. I lifted out a bundle wrapped in cloth and untied the cords around it. My own Nagamitsu sword lay inside, snug as though it had been sleeping all this time. It appeared as priceless as it actually was. I brought it to Michiko and knelt before her.
“I have not used this since that day,” I said. “And yet every day I’m aware of its presence. There were some days when I wanted so badly to row out to sea and drop it into the depths.”
“Why have you held on to it then?”
“Because I was frightened,” I said, and stopped. I forced myself to continue. “What if I forgot him, forgot everything that had happened?” I felt I was not explaining myself with sufficient clarity and I clenched my fist in frustration.
She nodded her head gently and I saw that she understood what I was trying to say. “You will not forget. He gave you the greatest gift he could. He taught you everything he knew and it has kept you strong and safe and unafraid all your life. All your life,” her voice became firmer, emphasizing the words.
I stroked the hilt of the sword, absorbing what she was telling me.
“Remember what he said when he first showed you how to do an
ukemi?”
she continued. “He said that if he failed you, then at the very least you would be in a position to protect yourself, to fall safely and to stand up again.”
In spite of the circumstances I was impressed with the strength of her memory. She seemed to be able to recall everything I had told her.
“That is his legacy to you. Not your guilt and pain and sorrow,” she said and I knew that she was telling me the truth. I had not seen it all this time, but now my eyes were open again.
She took my hands in hers. “Do you not recall what you told your sister? The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?”
At first I did not know what it was, this flow of damp heat that seethed in my eyes yet cooled the skin around them. And when I realized it was tears, a lifetime of habit and discipline made me attempt to stop them, to hold them on the rim of my eyes and refuse them release.
Michiko saw my struggle and with both her hands reached out for my face. Using her thumbs she ruptured the trembling skin of my tears and I welcomed them. Finally, they came.
I made no sound, but stood there like a statue in Istana’s garden, feeling the accumulation of grief flow out of me, accompanied by a rush of images that could have been forgotten memories or remembered dreams. I felt myself lifting up, on the arches of my feet, then on my toes. Michiko reached up from where she lay on her mattress and grasped my hand.
I was wrong; the burden could be lightened, the weight could be lessened. I closed my eyes once, for a long time, knowing the tears would never return.
She made herself stand up with some difficulty. She had been—and still was—a woman of great beauty, but illness had imprinted its mark upon her. Hard as she had tried to fight it, I could feel her weariness of the battle.
She brought out Endo-san’s own katana and set it next to mine. “These should always remain together.” She managed a rueful smile. “It is their fate.”
She was right. I saw now what I had been waiting for, the true reason why I had kept my own sword all these years. I pushed them closer together, almost touching: Cloud and Illumination, shadow and light.
She placed Endo-san’s letter, the letter that had brought her to me, on the tatami mat. “You have not read this.”
My eyes stayed on it for a long time, until the weave of the tatami began to move like waves in my unblinking vision. I looked away and said finally, “I do not think I wish to now. I think it is time I let him go.”
I helped Michiko to the door and she leaned against its frame. I pointed out to her the ground beneath the tree where I had buried Endo-san. “I left no marker, no gravestone. Once I am gone no one will ever know where he lies.”
She turned her attention to the unmarked grave and, for a moment, swift as a stone skipping across the smooth surface of a lake before it sank, I saw the memory of her love for Endo-san.
I held her as she wept. We felt Endo-san’s presence, felt his arms encircle us, and for the first time since the end of the war, half a century before, I knew we were all finally at peace. Nothing could harm us now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I accepted the Penang Historical Society’s invitation to attend the party for the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Japanese Occupation, to be held at the residence of the governor of Penang. Since Independence in 1957 a succession of Malay and Chinese appointees has held the post. The days of the British live now only in fond memories.
A few days before the event, the secretary of the society called me and asked if I could donate a souvenir from the war and I replied that I would see if I could oblige her.
I informed Adele and the staff of Hutton & Sons that I had found a suitable buyer for my family’s company and that their positions would remain secure, as one of the expressed conditions of the terms of sale. Ronald Cross, who now ran Empire Trading, having returned from Australia after the war to succeed Henry Cross, was keen to expand his family business for his grandchildren. I was certain that Ronald, having lived in Penang all his life, would honor the memory of all the Huttons who had been linked to my great-grandfather’s dream.
After my announcement Adele came into my office and embraced me. “I’m going to miss you terribly,” she said.
“You should retire,” I said. She was not much younger than me, I recalled.
“And do what? Sit at home and take care of my grandchildren?” She shuddered at the thought and I laughed.
“It’ll take months to finalize the sale. I’ll still be in Penang, you know that. I’ll never leave,” I said. “You can come and visit me any time at Istana.”
She pulled back from me. “In all these years, this is the first time you’ve asked me to come to your house.”
“I should have done it a long time ago,” I said.
* * *
Everyone who had fought in the war, those who still lived, came to the anniversary party. It was a strange crowd, mostly of very old people meeting their friends again, knowing it might be for the last time. And so, when they spoke fondly of the antics and quirks of dead friends and lost lovers, the voices were louder, the laughter richer, and the tears heavier yet gladder than in previous years. I walked around the glass cases exhibiting my father’s collection of
keris,
which I had donated to the Penang Historical Society in his name. There was also an exhibition of memorabilia and documents relating to the war and I came to a frame where a faded photograph caught my attention.
It showed a young European man—not much more than a boy, I thought—standing in a row of stern-faced Japanese officials, watching as the Japanese flag was raised. He appeared lost, out of place among that crowd, but there was a strong and determined expression on his face. It took me a few seconds to come to the realization that I was that young man. I searched for Endo-san but he had been cropped out of the photograph a long time ago.