by Ho Sok Fong
Thinking about it now made her feel abandoned all over again.
But she had not been abandoned, she told herself; she had abandoned them.
At first she had thought it was wrong to feel sadness about her departure, but she was starting to think it might not be. She felt melancholy, a mood that hovered like a cloud of fog.
She didn’t know many Japanese characters. A few katakana. Kanji that she studied while the pastor was giving his sermons, one stroke at a time. How miraculous that he knew Japanese, even though he wasn’t a real Japanese person. Was it a sign? Was this what was meant by “God’s call”? Although God’s call was contradictory, because all those holy stories and verses wanted people to give thanks, but also for them to quake with fear. God was somehow both loving and furious. Take the Denial of Peter: “Before the cock has crowed, you will have denied me three times.” How Peter must have suffered that night.
It was troubling sometimes, but still she preferred to sit in the church and feel troubled while surrounded by its holy embrace. One glimpse of Pastor Chiu’s welcoming presence was enough to suffuse her with hope, at least for a little while. Then would come another cruel part, and the fear returned. Fear and happiness swirled together like a cyclone. But do not deny, do not resist. Heaven has its ways.
In May, Kikuko heard about the Xinhai Revolution for the first time, and Pastor Chiu started to talk about Dr. Sun Yat-sen. She was familiar with the name; in those days, even the rickshaw coolies had it constantly hanging from their lips. In the office attached to the church, a few of the Hakka board members had hung up a photo of him, and it was not uncommon to see people bowing respectfully before it.
It was a troubled year in Sandakan. Sometimes, Kikuko would leave the house in a cheongsam, and switch her geta for cloth shoes with pointed, bead-encrusted toes. It was not a very good disguise. The Chinese girls had single eyelids and sallow skin, just like her, and a similar aura of being old before their time, but most of them wore unlined jackets and cotton trousers. They would emerge from the plantations filthy and disheveled, with their faces peeling and their bones jutting out. Some didn’t even have shoes, and went around barefoot.
The previous May, Kikuko had been heading away from the port, down a pepper vendors’ alley filled with a jostling, shoving crowd, when a rainstorm swooped in and soaked them all to the skin. She dropped her umbrella. The Dusun and Indian guards appointed by the North Borneo Company pushed into the crowd and began arresting Chinamen distributing flyers around the docks. A southwesterly wind swept the alley, pushing past feet, quickening footsteps until people seemed to be riding the air. Kikuko ran with everyone else, racing for the far end. The rain was heavy and the ground was slick, and the rickety bamboo shelves leaning against the alley walls, used to dry peppercorns on sunny days, came crashing down. The crowd hollered and screamed and pressed on through the chaos. A cart became untethered and rammed into Kikuko, pushing her through a doorway.
It was another kitchen. Dark and clammy, cave-like. Inside, a frail old man was asleep on a hard wooden board, his face like a skull. She tried to ignore him. He was probably just another coolie with an opium habit, attempting to ease his suffering.
At first, she felt nothing; not even the slightest flicker of pity. But then she noticed that he was looking at her. There was a faint glimmer in his eyes. Her heart clenched. She had never done a good deed in all her life.
There was no one there to see, which made it easier, although it still felt stupid to do it—she made the sign of the cross and whispered the psalm, “Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.”
He blinked, head pressed into his hands. He didn’t flinch. She reached for him, intending to touch his forehead, but stopped halfway. Through the mottled brown window glass, she could see rain beating on the road, hurtling feet churning the surface to mud, panic everywhere.
She left when the rain stopped.
That afternoon, she started planning to do something honorable. She decided that there should be a church for Japanese people.
Pastor Chiu was not Japanese, Kikuko knew this. Pastor Chiu was a Chinaman. He was always talking in the Minnan dialect to the Taiwanese believers. Kikuko couldn’t understand much Minnan and so found it strangely comforting, a compensation of sorts, to observe his interactions with the Chinese Hakkas from the Basel Mission. He sometimes gathered with them to sing hymns; other times, to argue fiercely. He was always a little aloof, a little lonely. Sometimes he would suddenly get up and leave, or start leafing through his book, or break off from the group and walk by himself. As it was, the Hakkas never walked in front of him, in their twos and threes—they followed behind, leaving a space in between. Among themselves, they were a chatty, boisterous group, whereas the pastor was quiet. He didn’t seem to depend on anyone. He was on his own.
This jealousy and secret delight was not rational. Kikuko knew it was not good to think like this. The pastor was the pastor. He was not Japanese. They might live in the same town, but they did not share a hometown. He was a man of God. But, sometimes, she dearly wished they had a shared heritage to bond over.
Kikuko didn’t know if anyone else was like this. She watched Noriko and Yoshiko, wondering whether they felt the same things she did. She considered her own life, her piles of rashly accumulated jewelry and cosmetics. Meaningless, all of it. Flashy stuff that would just tarnish or be forgotten. She marveled at her former ability to spend money like water; at her blithe disregard for her finances and her body, the unpaid debts stretching back over a dozen years.
Her transformation made her delirious with happiness. Pastor Chiu helped her to accept some of the more uncomfortable Bible passages. The ones about original sin, and the terror of Judgment Day.
Since coming to the kitchen prayer sessions, Kikuko had reflected on her former suffering, and concluded that it was a blessing to have encountered the pastor. This was God, allowing her to come closer to His grace. Every time she prayed, she gave thanks with all her heart. She would silently mouth quotes from Proverbs, her peace of mind for the day depending on the ritual: “A merry heart doeth like a good medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” She was also fond of Nehemiah 8:10: “Neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” She couldn’t read many characters but could recite these lines by heart, and doing so lifted her mood. It made her feel gentle.
At first, all was well. For a whole year, things were peaceful and she felt none of the fretfulness that used to push her toward frivolous purchases and ostentation. She was nothing but respectful toward the pastor. Starting from the new year, despite the continuing dire state of her finances, she instituted a new policy on Japan Street: the brothel would close on Sundays, and the girls were free either to take the day off or to go and work elsewhere.
Partly through fundraising, partly through direct donations, by the May that Pastor Chiu started talking about Dr. Sun Yat-sen (a year after the incident in the pepper vendors’ alley), Kikuko had raised enough money to build a chapel in the western part of Sandakan. It had an attap roof but a Japanese-style wooden door, and was raised from the ground on squat mud and stone blocks. The front part, a space of about two hundred square feet, was to be used for services. A large stove was built in the kitchen, containing three separate ovens, and there was an outhouse for the latrine.
The chapel was surrounded by hundreds of acres of Japanese-owned coconut and rubber estates, and a little farther away, over toward the mountains, was the Manila hemp factory, also run by a Japanese firm. It was a long trip from St. Michael’s church and Japan Street, but much more convenient for the plantation workers.
One morning, Kikuko came in with Noriko and another girl from Amakusa, to make a start on the cleaning. She ran a cloth along the base of the walls, working it back and forth until the floorboards gleamed. The windows were open, a mountain breeze gusted in, sparrows and cicadas chirped.
She drew water from t
he well and scrubbed and soaked and scrubbed again, washing the cotton sheet she planned to use for the altar. Eventually she wrung it out and hung it over the washing line. The sky was a limpid blue. She couldn’t tell whether the wind was blowing in from over the sea or somewhere inland, but either way it felt refreshing. She retreated under the shadow of the eaves, and the wind grew stronger. The distant clouds were like ships, sailing up from behind the mountain and pressing forward, flinging her aside into this still, dark shadow.
After a while, she went back inside. The kitchen was silent. The girls had gone to walk up a nearby hill, where there was a view of the hemp factory and its young Japanese laborers. She went into the front room and lay down on the tatami, feeling thoroughly exhausted. Just a few minutes, she thought. An aging yellow flame tree stood outside the open window, its trunk covered in moss and its petals trembling in the dappled sunlight.
She stretched out across the tatami and relaxed. She was so tired, she was only intending to do as she usually did: to say a few prayers of thanksgiving, then rest for a moment.
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
It was a peaceful afternoon. The trees cast swaying shadows and weeds quietly grew. She closed her eyes—oh! Her own body startled her.
Oh Lord, if only it wasn’t a sin.
Pastor Chiu’s voice seemed to ricochet off the walls. For a moment, she could clearly visualize him: his face and body floated before her like watery shadows, and he bent to meet her eyes. It was just past midday, and light flooded through the windows of the newly built chapel. Perhaps it was just that her arms and legs were stretched out. It was so comfortable. She rarely allowed herself to relax. Now she was lying flat on her back, limbs loose, and—oh, there it was. A breeze climbed over her ankles and skated up her calves. It was round like a ball, there and gone, there and gone, until it reached the top of her thighs and paused, circling.
She lay very still. It was delightful, gently nibbling like a fish, sending soft, soft waves through her legs. At first it was only a gentle throbbing, and she allowed her legs to fall open, ever so slightly, and everything was slow and drawn out. A restless warmth crept from her stomach down to her thighs. It was as if an invisible pair of hands were working to and fro. But the hands weren’t just invisible; they weren’t touching her. She felt an intense need to respond, but then felt she should resist. Except the stiller she was, the greater the trembling in her body, like a rising sea, until she couldn’t bear it any longer and she flipped over, a body spinning inside a wave, and she pressed the wave between her legs, feeling the seaweed firm against her.
It subsided.
She opened her eyes. Sat up. There was a large damp imprint on the tatami. Such base thoughts. She was shocked; had not expected something as chaste and desireless as giving thanks to turn into something like this.
The sun was tilting west. Her mind felt as if hung from the iron spokes of a rickshaw sunshade. A thread sprouted from her forehead and started to pull, tangling around the wheels that ground over Singapore Street. The long road twisted around dramatic bends, mountains on one side, sea on the other. At some point, she became aware of Noriko, roaring like a tiger in her ear.
Kikuko stared in confusion.
“Am I invisible?” complained Noriko. “I’m going to the pasar for a bit. Do you want some kueh?”
Kikuko went back to running the brothel as usual. There were accounts to be done. Things to take care of. When people called her, their voices seemed to filter through from a great distance, further away than Heaven. She wished they would leave her alone.
At the beginning of June, Pastor Chiu set sail for Taiwan. The brand-new chapel had been used only twice, and now it was being left to the birds.
On Sundays, she still went over to sweep and pull up weeds, staying until the afternoon. Occasionally, Pastor White came to find her in the coffee house, inviting her to come back and pray in St. Michael’s. She dragged herself to a couple of services. At least there was no one to bother her there. As soon as she sat down, her thoughts crashed off into the distance. The hymns and readings were like waves beneath an empty sampan. The body she left behind was as still as the long prayer pews.
October came, and the shipping routes from the north wrapped around her ankles, constantly pulling her toward the docks. She knew all the ships by heart. There were many that Pastor Chiu could have taken—he could have left from Amoy, Honshu, Tamsui. If he missed all of those, there was always the sailing from Manila at the end of the month.
All month long, she paced distractedly through Sandakan’s narrow alleys. Her shoes seemed to decide the route. Some mornings, she would set out for the pasar and find herself walking along the high street to the port. Her head was filled with the lost clacking of her geta. She would come to and find she had gone too far. Those long, drooping rain tarpaulins, the damp walkways, the wood factory with its whirling sawdust, the baskets of dried seafood, the oxcarts that reeked of manure—they had risen like a cloud of dust, then vanished.
In the afternoons it usually poured, and her waxed umbrella was heavy. Gray clouds clustered over the harbor. The docks were in chaos. The Japanese wanted Shandong, and a Chinaman spat at her for it. Why blame me, she wondered. There were so many Chinamen. Coolies, yelling and unleashing fists into the rain. She understood most of what they shouted. Even if she hadn’t, she would have known those two most important syllables: Ja. Pan.
They won’t hurt me, she tried to reassure herself. They can’t.
Bundled sacks of Manila hemp were piled beside the lane for loading carts, soaking from the rain. The Chinamen refused to touch Japanese goods. In front of the Dutch ship just docked from Manila, a large, bustling crowd had gathered; on the one in from Honshu, passengers pressed up against the deck railings, waiting helplessly for a gangplank to appear.
The ignored vessel was steeping in the stony blue water, rising from it like a vertiginous cliff. No longshoremen approached. Seagulls cruised through the rain, carrying with them the bleakness of the ocean. Waves sprayed foam over the outstretched stone pier. Kikuko missed Pastor Chiu and wished fervently that she had two bodies: one to leave behind in Sandakan, and another that could sprout wings and fly away.
A shoal of light and shadow flitted across the floral-patterned wallpaper and behind the drawing room curtains, where it was recast into waves. Sir Kimson had left, to attend to some mysterious business inspired by the governor general’s letter. Kikuko, now fully dressed, inspected the pictures on the walls. The various incomprehensible maps held no interest for her, because they weren’t how she pictured North Borneo or its surrounding sea. She perceived it as fragments, sounds, a multitude of little details: crows and sea birds, horns of steamers coming into port, debts in the grocery store, ships, rickshaws, sailors of all different races, sticky bodily fluids, and creaking beds. As for the portraits, what Sir Kimson referred to as “those blood-sucking swine” (England’s King George the Fifth among them), she didn’t feel like they had anything to do with her.
Well, except one.
It was by that elderly Frenchman, named Odilon, or maybe it was Adirun. She’d met him at the first dinner party she had attended at Sir Kimson’s. After the dinner he got very drunk; so drunk that he wouldn’t stop pawing at her, groping her all over, wanting to play the domination game that often went on in the brothel. Sir Kimson and the other guests sat in a cheerful circle around them, watching as they writhed around on the drawing room’s horse-hair sofa, like opponents in a wrestling match. Afterward, the Frenchman left behind a few sketches and charcoal drawings, by way of thanks. Kikuko did not like them. They were full of giant lidless eyes and hot-air balloons like human heads, and she found them disturbing. There was only one she didn’t mind: a huge hot-air balloon was drifting over a city and, beneath it, people were throwing their heads back in awe, leaving their horses to run where they liked. The steam from the balloon was like a hairy dog’s tail against the sky. Sadly, Sir Kimson refused to hang th
at one up.
Until recently, Kikuko had always looked away if she didn’t want to see. There was a picture on the wall that she especially disliked. When she asked Sir Kimson why he insisted on displaying it, he said it was a portrait like any other, just with the face hidden. It deserved to hang among the greats. One day, she told him it was like being stared at by a ghost, and he replied, “That’s what turns me on.”
Looking at it now, what could be seen of the face’s half-exposed cheeks and beard reminded Kikuko of Jesus. Jesus hiding behind a circular opening, which could have been the window of a lighthouse or a jail cell. He was looking out, his expression that of a prisoner awaiting rescue. It was a dark, wintery painting, but the single eye burned exceptionally bright. Especially when she and Sir Kimson were in the drawing room with all their clothes off.
She felt a shudder in her spine.
But he isn’t Jesus, she thought. It’s wrong to think like that. That man definitely isn’t Jesus.
The carriage clock by the kitchen door slowly chimed the hour and the clouds seemed to part: rays of sunlight suddenly pierced the curtain seams, brightening the room. Kikuko knelt on the Persian rug and made the sign of the cross.
He isn’t Jesus, she thought, just like Sir Kimson isn’t Pastor Chiu. Pastor Chiu is a man with a generous heart. Does he love me? Surely he does. He must. We are nothing alike, but that’s its own kind of love, perhaps the most noble kind. This being so, I will go and love others as he loves me. This is how we will multiply, like Jesus multiplied those two loaves and five fish. I will share this love I have received with others. I will love this lascivious, brutal, foul-tempered rogue. Not only that, I will also love those who stand against him. I will love everyone, anyone who comes to me, and in this way it will be as if I have received Pastor Chiu’s love.
