The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  I asked Chow if the school was far from our house. He said that no, it wasn’t that far, but since I was going to board there, it didn’t matter. He said all I needed to do was pay attention to the teachers and respect them, and to behave well. It was a very hot day and the windows were rolled down, and as the car sped along, I smelled flowers, rotting garbage, and now and then the scent of the harbour. We climbed a hill up Stubbs Road. We moved out of a neighbourhood of apartments and houses and onto a road bordered by high walls hung with vegetation. There were few pedestrians, and the thick, soft walls of vines and trees around us seemed to dampen the engine’s sound.

  The world seemed very bright and close. Ah-Ming had ironed a sharp crease into my shorts and I was wearing new shoes. The jacket didn’t feel too hot. My mother had told me I must wear it so that I would step out of the car properly dressed, but I had other worries.

  Chow drove through the broad gates of the Diocesan Boys’ School. The car passed from the silent pavement to the soft crunch of fine gravel, up a drive that led to a large white building. I stepped out of the car and noticed a yellow-winged bird jumping around the base of a bush beside the front steps. There was a sign with the school’s name over the entrance in Chinese and English. As I was sounding it out, Chow put my bags down beside me, and I turned to look up into his face. My hand was in my pocket and I fidgeted, then pulled it out impulsively. As I did so, I realized I was about to offer it to him to hold, and stopped myself. I adjusted my clothes awkwardly, then put my hand back in my pocket. I realized I’d forgotten to ask my mother when her first visit would be.

  I took my hand out again and held both arms stiffly at my sides and looked straight ahead at the school’s front doors. A minute passed in silence, during which neither Chow nor I spoke, and I felt heat climbing my scalp and neck in the late summer morning. The school entrance was flanked by ornamental bushes with an unfamiliar scent, mingling with the smell of dry gravel dust. I thought to steal another glance at Chow to see if he was watching me, if there was something I should do next, but then the doors opened. Mr. Lo, the headmaster, came down the front steps to greet me. He wore a suit the colour of wet limestone and his glasses caught the sun.

  I moved into my current flat six years ago, in early 2009, just before my eightieth birthday. The evening I arrived in Malaysia from the United States, it was monsoon season in Kuala Lumpur, and as the plane landed, I looked out the window and saw the smeared image of a city drenched in weeks of heavy rain.

  My daughter, Evelyn, picked this flat for me. It was sparely furnished, as I had requested, and I brought only a few things with me on the long flight over. Preparing for the move was more work than I’d first expected; the sorting of accumulations is a bit of a cliché for old people, but it’s true. In the end I don’t know what moved me to keep some things and discard others. Giving things away to friends and neighbours, in the belief they might be of interest, seemed more like an eccentric form of littering than preparation for a different life, and so the garbage bags filled quickly. When my daughter greeted me at the airport, I did indeed feel lighter, though that’s a sensation one shouldn’t overthink in old age.

  It had been nine years since my wife Alice died, after her long illness, and though I’d adapted to living alone, I never quite overcame the feeling of living an uncentred life. For the first few years of her disease, when her hospital stays were mostly acute and she was able to travel and live her life in between, I approached her illness as a problem for us to overcome. But in the second stage it was less clear what was happening to her and why, and her illness exacted a more severe toll than we had expected. She changed. The disease merged with the woman who was my wife, altered her personality, and try as I might, I could see her only as a sick person. I felt pity, and resented feeling it. Leaving our old house, which felt changed, even invaded, was a relief after a decade of illness and another of solitude.

  When Evelyn brought me up to the new flat, I looked around and appreciated its plainness and large windows, though the smells were what I noticed first. The building was then newly finished; all the way from the entrance the scents of paint and sawdust had trailed us in a growing eddy, and the chalky odour of cut stone and the last ghosts of wood polish and sealants followed me into the flat. My daughter had stopped by earlier to open a few windows, so that when we entered the flat I was struck by the rain-crisped atmosphere of all these fading residues. It must have been that scent, of freshness and the ancient sea-damp of my childhood, that impressed on me that this was the first place in my life where I would live alone.

  A feeling of unease seized me at that moment, and to shake it off I walked over to the windows overlooking the park. The sky, bound in stony clouds across the landscape, surrendered endless rain onto the city, painting the roads and sidewalks in a dark gleam. I let the initial stab of loneliness pass and turned to help Evelyn direct the movers.

  I had returned, if not to my old city, then at least to its corner of the world. To be close to Evelyn was good for both of us, though I knew we wouldn’t have agreed to this had it not been, like a pianist’s flourish, a gesture in service of the end. I didn’t want to see this reunion as a portent of decline, even though that was what it was. Looking at Evelyn as she fussed over my things, I knew I should feel joy. Over the years I’ve known events in my life that others would envy: travelling the world, getting into medical school, marriage, children, a rewarding if truncated career. But too often I found myself unable to feel true happiness, only a sense of troubled relief, as though I were continually avoiding disaster. Only once, a long time ago, did I really feel that deep illumination, a great burst of happiness when I found someone I’d yearned for.

  For years I told myself I should sit down and write a memoir of my mother, and a couple of times I went as far as to type a title at the top of a page, which I underlined decisively. I felt a desire, sometimes even a compulsion, to release a portion of myself, to set it outside myself. I thought I had to do this in order to be legitimate to others, even to confirm to myself that I was real. But I made little progress with the memoir, and in the cleanup for the move from Chicago I finally put the idea aside for good. As time goes by, I feel this failure lighten, knowing how little we can truly transcribe of what resides inside us.

  Evelyn stood next to me at the window. Despite the heavy rain, she pointed out the nearby gardens where I could walk, a mall with restaurants, an Anglican church. I watched her finger draw a circle over the glass, tracing and retracing as though to reassure me with the smallness of its scope.

  THREE

  September 1941

  I was now twelve and about to start my sixth year at Diocesan. My first months there in 1936 were marked by the pain of separation from my mother. I had no idea then that my misery was shared by the other first-year students. The intense routine at the school, and its many rituals of belonging, compelled us to talk and think about things other than our sadness. So I adapted as I had to. I learned that fear is made worse by thinking, and that survival often requires no thought at all.

  We were one month into the 1941 school year. Each fall, after the holidays, the return to routine was like the snapping of a flag, sharper and sharper each September, so that it took ever fewer days for us to regain the persona of the student boarder who sang the school’s official songs and rose in unison for its teachers. This time the transition was almost instantaneous, as though my summer break had been only a performance of some loud-mouthed youth who also carried my name and image. I was ready for the year.

  Three large buildings made up most of the school: the dormitory, where three hundred boys ate and slept, the huge central building with the classrooms and theatres, and the residence at the far end where the headmaster and some of the teachers lived and where parents were sometimes received. These were surrounded by lawns, gardens, and an athletic track.

  Sometimes, after class or in the evenings, Leuk and I met by a huge, ancient banyan tree at the edge of the pro
perty. We would sit or stand beneath the curtains of hanging roots, talking, speculating, testing each other with questions that neither of us could have answered. We talked about movies we would see or about snacks in the market and what food we missed most from Ah-Ming’s kitchen. We talked about all the things we missed from home, but not about the centre of that world, our mother, whom we missed most of all.

  Early in October, Mr. Lo called us into his office to tell us that our mother was coming to visit us in a couple of weeks. I was thrilled to hear it, though disappointed that it wouldn’t be a weekend home. I met Leuk out at the banyan tree and we talked about her visit. We were almost desperate to impress her with things we had each made but were mindful of not doing anything too similar. Finally we agreed that Leuk would finish a painting he was working on, and I would show her my best effort in calligraphy.

  One evening that week, I went to the teachers’ library. The housekeeper said none of the teachers was using the library at the moment, and I could go in if I was quick. I found the volume on calligraphy that I needed and put it in my bag.

  Outside the library, I heard agitated voices. I looked down the long hallway to the teachers’ parlour, and in the yellow light I saw several of the teachers gathering close around the radio. Some looked right at it while others sat with their heads bowed in concentration. An older teacher, Mr. Yuen, held a book between the palms of both hands, worrying the page corners with his thumb. I couldn’t make out much of what the radio announcer was saying, something about Japan and its emperor, Hirohito, and about the Nationalist government in China. At the mention of the Nationalists, Mr. Yuen looked up and smoothed his white hair back nervously, and then he leaned over and whispered to the teacher next to him. I heard war mentioned several times. Then the announcer mentioned Singapore.

  “How can they abandon Singapore?” a teacher shouted, and the others hushed him angrily while Mr. Yuen reached over and turned the volume up. The previous week, two boys in my school had left suddenly for Singapore with their families.

  Afraid of being caught, I returned to the dormitory.

  We had all been hearing fragmentary talk of war by then, but until that night it had sounded only at the peri­phery of our days, like a far-off noise or an argument overheard through an open window. War appeared on the screens at movie theatres, during the newsreels about Europe, when we were busy talking and throwing peanut shells at each other. War was a word, another subject, tossed out by the same adult sphere that assigned homework, wrote Sunday sermons, and gossiped in the market.

  In the past two weeks, though, something had begun to shift. Five boys’ parents had come for unexpected visits, and within a day or two the parents had taken their sons from the school with all their belongings. Mr. Lo had been present at each departure, seeing the boy off with a lingering handshake, and at times I had seen him later in the halls on such days, wandering pensively or looking out over the grounds. I asked Leuk what he knew about these boys leaving, but he had no idea.

  It was Sunday, October 19, the day my mother came to visit. I still recall the calendar posted at the far end of the dormitory over the sink, with all the Sundays in bright red. Every time I went to wash my hands or face, I looked at it and counted the days to her visit. On Wednesday evenings after supper, every boy in the school had to write his mother a letter in the dining hall, and these were delivered the following day. My letter the Wednesday before her visit had been a little longer than usual, and I had asked, with the mixture of formality and yearning that this ritual inspired, for a few extra items.

  “Mother, could you please bring with you some sweets, but not too many as the headmaster doesn’t allow them to be hoarded, but I need a few extra to give to my prefect. I also need socks and if Leuk hasn’t asked you he needs some too. I greatly look forward to your visit. Can you also bring something to read because I’m bored? Your son.”

  The old Daimler gleamed as it pulled through the gates, up the gravel drive to the steps, where Leuk and I stood with Mr. Lo. He stepped forward first to greet our mother. Chow got out quickly to open the passenger door and our mother stepped out onto the gravel. I still remember the emerald green of her dress and her jacket of white silk running with embroidered willow branches. She beamed when she saw us. We ran past the headmaster to her, and as Leuk and I embraced her, I felt our arms cross over the ermine stole around her neck, her sole concession to Western fashion. The fur pressed into my cheek, and I smelled her perfume as she murmured words only my brother and I could hear. Chow ran around to the back of the car and lifted packages out of the boot.

  Mr. Lo accompanied us into the parlour. It was an ornate and stuffy room, a mixture of European and Chinese furniture sinking into thick Persian rugs. A low coal fire burned in the brazier, and a photo of the missionary Robert Morrison hung on the wall, next to a much larger photo of King George. My mother settled herself into a sofa just beneath these images and passed each of us a small box wrapped in brown paper. Her eyes shone as we took them, and she pursed her lips.

  We sat with the boxes on our laps, waiting to be told that we could open them. My mother looked at us for a moment with a smile, and yet I felt a slight disquiet, sensing that she was both happy and worried as she nodded at the boxes.

  “Go ahead. After you open them, I only want to hear about school.”

  After we opened our packages and thanked her for bringing what we’d requested, she asked us about our schooling. Leuk brought out his painting, of three carp swimming in a pond in which the branches of a willow were reflected. I brought out my scroll and handed it to her excitedly. She was delighted with our work and pored over each one.

  She told us about our older brothers and how well they were doing with the firm and asked us more about school. She seemed happy, almost relieved, to talk about our education and the good grades we’d earned. She talked also about Yee-Lin, the young woman Sheung had married that summer, and how pleased she was with her. Wei-Ming, who was now seven, had just started at a school nearby.

  Though I was glad to see her, throughout the visit a question gnawed at me. I thought of the boys who’d left abruptly in recent weeks and worried she had come to take us home, or might soon.

  I remember being conscious of every moment of her visit, fearing it was a prelude to our leaving the school. I had no idea where those other boys had gone, or what had become of them. School was where we surely belonged, and to be apart from our parents for a time, even our entire families, was a necessity of life. There was a time to separate; somehow I knew this, from my arrival here five years earlier, from the way we were induced to bond like little tribes, or from our growing lack of interest in writing home to our mothers. There had been nights when I wondered if the true purpose of our school was to break us from our families, and I felt shame at my enjoyment of my life here, even though I missed my mother terribly at times. But who were they, these women who lived in service to their own inarticulate power of love, to take us back when we were not yet men? I thought of being taken away while the other boys went on learning and bonding, studying the secrets of manhood. And if I were suddenly taken home, I knew I’d be both happy to be with my mother yet dangerously incomplete.

  I was sorry the whole visit was taking place in the parlour. Everything else in our lives at school was somewhere else — the classroom, the theatre, the field, the painting studio — but I hadn’t planned on showing our mother around. We ate lunch there and she talked a little more about Wei-Ming’s school. At the end of the visit we walked outside, where Chow was waiting with the passenger door already open.

  On the gravel drive, she put her hand on Leuk’s shoulder and gave each of us a kiss. As she leaned over, I threw my arms around her and felt tears prick my eyes. When I did that, she moved her hand and brushed her fingers slowly over the clipped hairs on the back of my neck. My mother stood up again and I looked at her face.

  “Over there!” I said. I pointed at the banyan tree in the far corner of the fiel
d. “Do you know what that is?” I asked.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s where Leuk and I go to talk almost every day. Almost no one goes there. That’s where Leuk told me you were coming to see us.”

  She glanced briefly at the tree. “Then I’m glad I came.” She kissed me. “I’ll be back before Christmas.”

  Mr. Lo was back and my mother returned his bow as he said goodbye. She stepped quickly into the car, and Chow got in and turned it around. I had been excited to tell my mother about the tree, to be outside in the sun again with her. It seemed she had just arrived. In the clear afternoon light, I imagined the parlour as a sombre box, a musty playhouse decorated by fussing old maids and colonial lawmakers, crammed with cold and over-polished wood. I thought that if I could only show her my scroll again, here in the sunlight, it would look better. But when the passenger door shut and I saw her face filtered through the greenish glass, tears welled up in my eyes, and I fisted my hands and held them tight against my sides. Leuk turned to look at me for a moment, as though he, being one year older, could surrender a few seconds of looking at our mother when I could not, and took my hand.

  “Christmas,” he repeated. “And who knows, she may come back even sooner.”

  When the car was out of sight, we headed back to the dormitory. I could smell autumn in the air again, blowing over and through us, washing out the scent of the parlour.

  There was a reunion of my old class at Diocesan in August 1997. The joke among us was that it was the fiftieth anniversary of the year we ought to have graduated, not when we actually did. Of the original twenty-five graduates in our class, eighteen made it to the reunion, but the discussions about who was missing and why were strangely brief the first evening. Alice was doing better and could travel again, and I watched her mingle with the other wives. There was really only one she knew well, but she was at ease the whole evening. It was the first real break she’d had since her last stay at the hospital.