by Tan Twan Eng
Even so, my life was regimented: breakfast at home, a pleasurable drive along the coastal road to work, lunch wherever it took my fancy, then back to work in the office until five in the evening. I would go for a swim at the Penang Swimming Club, have a few drinks, and then drive home.
I felt old, and it was not a very pleasant feeling. The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is the misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still traveling toward those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.
I had ended my classes five years earlier, and had sent my last student to another teacher. My engagements abroad had been pruned considerably and the annual pilgrimages to Japan had ceased. I had also made tentative enquiries as to the sale of the company, and the response had been favorable. I was preparing for my final journey, cutting away all obligations, all moorings, as ready to sail out as a seafarer just waiting for the right wind.
I was surprised at my maudlin feelings, which I thought I had put away years ago. Perhaps it was meeting Michiko, meeting another person who had known Hayato Endo-san. The feelings evoked by the unexpected appearance of Endo-san’s katana refused to settle, and it was with an effort that I pushed them away and went to work.
When lunchtime came around my mind was already straying and I felt ready to leave my office for the day. I informed Mrs. Loh, my secretary of many years, and she looked at me as though I had been stricken with a sudden illness.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Adele.”
“You don’t look fine to me.”
“How do I look then?”
“Something is worrying you. You’re thinking of the war again,” she said.
After close on five decades with me she knew me well. “You guessed correctly, Adele,” I sighed. “I was thinking of the war.
Only the old people remember now. And thank God their memories are so unreliable.”
“You did a lot of good. And that, people will always remember. The older folk will tell their children and grandchildren. I would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for you.”
“You also know a lot of people died because of me.”
She could not find a ready reply and I walked out, leaving her to her memories.
I headed out into the sunshine. On the steps of the entrance I paused, watching the funnels of ships sticking out over the rooftops of the buildings. Weld Quay was within walking distance. The godowns would be busy at this time: stevedores unloading cargo—gunnysacks of grains and spices and boxes of fruit—carrying them on their naked shiny backs, as coolies had done two hundred years ago; workers repairing ships, their welding tools flashing sparks of white light, bright as exploding stars.
Every now and then a ship sounded its whistle, a sound so comforting to me whenever I was in my office, for it had never changed in the past fifty years. The briny scent of the sea at low tide, mixed with the smell of the mudflats steaming in the sun, wafted through the air. Crows and gulls hung in the sky like a child’s mobile toy over a crib. Sunlight bounced off the buildings— the Standard Chartered Bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, India House. A constant flow of vehicles went around the clock tower donated by a local millionaire to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, adding to the noise. I have never seen the light of Penang replicated anywhere else in the world—bright, bringing everything into razor-sharp focus, yet at the same time warm and forgiving, making you want to melt into the walls it shines on, into the leaves it gives life to. It is the kind of light that illuminates not only what the eyes see, but also what the heart feels.
This is my home. Even though half of me is English I have never hungered for England. England is a foreign land, cold and gloomy. And the weather is worse. I have lived on this island all my life, and I know I want to die here too.
I started walking, moving through the lunchtime crowds: young clerks laughing with their lovers; office workers talking loudly with one another; students carrying large bags, pushing each other in mock fights; street peddlers ringing bells and shouting their wares. A number of people recognized me and gave me a slight, if uncertain smile, which I returned. I was almost an institution myself.
I decided not to go home yet. I crossed Farquhar Street and entered the cool shaded grounds of St. George’s Church. The wind rustled the old angsana trees and made the shadows on the grass waver. I sat on the moss-covered steps of the little domed pavilion in the church grounds as the sounds of the traffic faded away. Birds called, and a jealous crow swooped in and broke up their singing. For a while I was at peace. If I closed my eyes I could have been anywhere on earth, at any time too. Perhaps Avalon, before Arthur was born. That had been one of my favorite stories when I was a child, one of the few English myths I liked, which had seemed almost Oriental in its magic and tragedy.
I opened my eyes reluctantly. Forgetfulness was one luxury I could not buy. I pushed myself up and went out of the churchyard. I started to walk faster, to prepare myself for tonight. I knew what was coming. It would be hard, but finally, after all these years I welcomed it. The opportunity would never come again, I realized. There was no time left. Not in this particular life anyway.
She was already at Istana when I got back from the Club, lying on a deck chair by the pool, her head covered by a large Panama hat. She was staring at Endo-san’s island, and there was an undisturbed stillness in the air, as though she had not moved for a long time. A book lay on the table next to her, open flat on the glass surface, waiting to be closed by her again. I watched her from inside the house. She opened her bag, took out a bottle of pills, and swallowed a handful of them.
I could feel the effects of the drinks I had consumed. The Club had been full of the usual crowd—noisy drunken Indian litigators retrying lost cases, and fat Chinese tycoons shouting into their phones to their stockbrokers. There were also the usual ancient British expatriates, leftovers from the war who had stayed on in the country they had come to love. At least they did not try to fight the war with me again today, or castigate me for the role I had played in it.
I asked Maria to leave dinner ready for us, and went for a shower. By the time I came downstairs the servants had gone home and we were all alone. A freshly grilled fillet of stingray marinated with chilli, lime, and spices on a large piece of fresh banana leaf lay on a plate on the table, and Michiko’s eyes were drawn to it. Maria always made the best ikan bakar—it was the Portuguese blood in her, she always told me. I started to pour a bottle of wine but Michiko stayed my hand. From a rustling package she produced a stout-looking bottle.
“Sake,” she said.
“Ah. Much better,” I replied, handing her two thimble-sized porcelain cups. She warmed the sake in the kitchen and poured deftly and we each drank it down in one swallow. The taste ... I had forgotten the taste. I shook my head. Too many drinks in one day.
This time we were much more at ease with each other, as though we had known each other all our past lives. I liked her laughter: it was light, airy, and yet not frivolous. Unlike many Japanese women I had met, she did not cover her mouth when she laughed, and I knew she truly found what I said amusing. A woman who was not afraid to show her teeth, whether in joy or in fury.
The sake went well with the meal, taking the edge off the spicy sauce. The fillet was tender, and our chopsticks separated the flesh easily from the bone. The banana leaf imparted a hint of green, raw flavor, soaking up and lightening the heavy marinade. We finished off with cold sago pudding in coconut milk, sweetened with melted dark palm sugar, which she seemed to enjoy.
“I brought Endo-san’s letter,” she said, at the end of our meal.
I halted the hand bringing the cup to my mouth.
“You may read it if you wish,” she continued, pretending to be oblivious to my reluctance.
I sippe
d and considered. “Perhaps later.”
She agreed, and poured me more sake.
We sat out on the terrace again. It was a balmy night, the sea giving off a metallic sheen, the sky starless, an unending sheet of black velvet. I felt a warm glow all over me, and was surprised to discover that the feeling was one of contentment. A fine dinner, excellent sake, an attentive listener, the whisper of the sea, a slight breeze blowing, the music of the cicadas—I should feel content. After all, what more could I ask for? I went to the living room, put on a recording and let Joan Sutherland sing into the darkness.
Michiko sighed, a smile around her lips. She stretched out her legs, one after the other, with the daintiness of a stork stepping through a lily pond.
“I was tactless this morning,” she began. “I thought you would have been pleased to see his sword again, and to find out that it had not been lost.”
I stopped her. “There are so many things you don’t know. I cannot blame you.”
“What happened to your family, your brothers, your sister?” she asked, filling my cup again. I was only mildly surprised. Obviously she had thoroughly investigated the circumstances before approaching me. Perhaps Endo-san’s letter had told her of my family.
“All dead,” I told her, seeing their faces float before my eyes like wavering images on the surface of a pool.
Under the faint light of the moon the statues in the garden regained some of their original glory, giving off an unearthly luminescence. “There is a house, further up the road, which has been deserted for years,” I said. “Local legend has it that on a night when the moon is at its fullest the marble statues left in the gardens come alive, and for a few hours roam about the grounds. Tonight, I can almost believe that the story is true.”
“How sad,” she said. “If I were a statue, and came back to life, I would always be looking for what I had lost, for the last thing I had done as a living being. Imagine having to go through your entire existence alternating between stone and flesh, death and life, always attempting to find the memories of your previous lives. I would eventually forget what I was searching for. I would forget what I was trying to remember.”
“Or one could just enjoy the moment when one is alive.” As soon as I spoke I knew how hypocritical I sounded, how ironic those words were.
Sutherland sang on, flinging her heart out into the night. Verdi’s Caro nome had been my father’s favorite aria, I told Michiko.
“And now it is your favorite,” she said.
I nodded. Then I said, “Ask me again, what you wanted to know this morning.”
She sipped her sake, leaned back in the wicker chair and said, “Tell me about your life. Tell me about the life you and Endo-san led. The joys you experienced and the sorrow that you encountered. I would like to know everything.”
The moment I had been waiting for. Fifty years I had waited to tell my tale, as long as the time Endo-san’s letter took to reach Michiko. Still I hesitated—like a penitent sinner facing my confessor, unsure if I wanted another person to know my many shames, my failures, my unforgivable sins.
As though to fortify me she took the letter out and placed it on the table between us. Its pages were folded, yellowed like old skin, the faint tattoo of aged ink that had seeped onto the blank side visible to me. Just like me, I thought, looking at the letter. The life I had lived was folded, only a blank page exposed to the world, emptiness wrapped around the days of my life; faint traces of it could be discerned, but only if one looked closely, very closely.
And so, for the first and last time, I gently unfolded my life, exposing what was written, letting the ancient ink be read once again.
Chapter Three
On the day I was born, my father planted a casuarina tree. It was a tradition begun by his grandfather. The lanky sapling was planted in the garden facing the sea and it would grow into a beautiful tree, hard and tall, its cloak of leaves exuding a light fragrance that mingled soothingly with the scent of the sea. It would be the last tree that my father planted in his life.
I was the youngest child of one of the oldest families in Penang. My great-grandfather, Graham Hutton, had been a clerk in the East India Company before sailing out to the East Indies to make his fortune in 1780. He had sailed around the Spice Islands trading in pepper and spices, and came to befriend Captain Francis Light, who was searching for a suitable port. He found it on an island in the Straits of Malacca, on the northwestern side of the Malay Peninsula and within comfortable reach of India. The island was sparsely inhabited, thick with trees, humped with rolling hills, and surrounded by long white stretches of beach. The local Malays named it after the tall areca palm trees—pinang— which grew abundantly on it.
Realizing its strategic potential immediately, Captain Light obtained the island from the Sultan of Kedah in return for six thousand Spanish dollars and British protection against usurpers of his throne. The island was named Prince of Wales Island, but eventually came to be known as Penang.
The Malay Peninsula had been partially colonized since the sixteenth century, by first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British. The British made the most headway, spreading their influence into almost all the Malay States. The discovery of tin and the suitability of the soil and weather for the planting of rubber trees—both materials of vital importance due to the Industrial Revolution—saw them fomenting internecine wars in their bid to control the States. Sultans were deposed, outcast heirs were put on thrones, money was paid in return for concessions and, when even these failed, the British were not loath to back their preferred factions with arms and might.
Graham Hutton was there when Captain Light loaded his cannon with silver pieces and fired them into the forests: his way of spurring the coolies into clearing the land, my father had told us. The nature of man being such, the ploy had worked. The island grew into a vibrant port, located between the changing of the monsoon winds. It became a place for sailors and traders on the way to China to recuperate, to treasure a few balmy weeks while waiting for the winds to shift.
Graham Hutton prospered, and it was not long after that Hutton & Sons was founded. He was not married at the time, and his optimism in the naming of his company was much commented upon. However, he knew what he wished to accomplish and he let nothing impede him.
Through various underhanded dealings, and his eventual marriage to the daughter of another trading family, my greatgrandfather began his legend in the East. The company became known as one of the most profitable trading houses. But the roots of Graham Hutton’s dynastic impulses dug in harder; he wanted a symbol to represent his dreams, something to last beyond his own life.
The Hutton mansion was built to perch above a slight cliff and overlooked the meadows of the sea that merged into the plains of the Indian Ocean. Designed by the team of Starke and McNeil and inspired by the works of Andrea Palladio, like many of the houses built at that time, the white stone building was surrounded by a row of Doric columns and dominated by a large curving colonnade crowned with a pediment. Its doors and window frames were made from Burmese teak and my great-grandfather imported stonemasons from Kent, Glaswegian ironmongers, marble from Italy, and coolie labor from India for its construction. There were twenty-five rooms in the house and, true to his ambitions, my great-grandfather, who had made many visits to the courts of the Malay Sultans, named his home Istana, the Malay word for “palace.”
Surrounding the main building were expansive lawns; carefully planted trees and flowerbeds lined a straight drive of almost white gravel. The drive rose pleasingly toward the house and, if one stood at the entrance and looked up, the prominent pediment seemed to direct a traveler on a road to the sky. When my father, Noel Hutton, inherited the house, a swimming pool and two tennis courts were constructed. Adjacent to the main house and shielded by a head-high hedge were the garage and the servants’ living quarters, both converted from stables when Graham Hutton’s passion for racehorses waned. When we were children my brothers an
d sister and I often dug around the grounds looking for horseshoes, shouting with triumph whenever one of us found one, even though it was crumbling with rust and left that iron-blood smell on our hands which still lingered after persistent scrubbing.
In the normal course of events I would never have inherited all these things. My father had four children and I was the last. I never thought much about the question of Istana’s future ownership. But I did love the house. Its graceful lines and history touched me strongly and I loved exploring every part of it, sometimes even, despite my fear of heights, climbing up to the roof through a door in the attic. I would sit and look out over the landscape of the roof, like a tickbird on the back of a water buffalo, and feel the house beneath me. I often asked my father to tell me the stories behind the portraits that lined the walls, and the dusty trophies won by people related to me, the inscriptions on them linking me to these long-gone pieces of my flesh and bone.
Much as I loved the house, I had a greater love for the sea—for its ever-changing moods, for the way the sun glittered on its surface, and how it mirrored every temperament of the sky. Even when I was a child the sea whispered to me, whispered and spoke to me in a language I assumed only I understood. It embraced me in its warm currents; it dissolved my rage when I was angry at the world; it chased me as I ran along the shore, curled itself around my shins, tempting me to walk farther and farther out until I became a part of its unending vastness.
