The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  He tied up the last sack and moved on to the other family. They made a real fuss about it.

  “We don’t have much,” the mother protested.

  “You may not want me to hide your valuables, but it’s better for all of us if you do.”

  I heard a lot of shuffling and the jingling of coins and jewellery, while the parents whispered to each other over the rumble of the engine. The captain walked back up to the helm as he tied the last of the sacks. Then he took a pole with a hook on one end and reached over the side of the boat. He pulled up a long chain that banged against the hull as it came up, and he secured the oilcloth sacks to the end before carefully lowering it back into the water. Then he turned to us with a quick grin, showing a mouth only half full of teeth.

  “Very good!” he said, as though he’d just won a bet. He returned to the helm, one hand rubbing the back of his head, and revved the motor. In my seat I rocked with the movement of the boat. I leaned against my sister-in-law and fell asleep.

  I woke with a start. People were shouting and a loud horn blew twice. I opened my eyes as the boat chugged to a stop and a bright light shone in our faces. Men shouted at us in Japanese.

  The woman behind me spoke rapidly to her daughter; her husband told her to be quiet. A patrol boat had pulled up next to us and shone a searchlight onto our deck.

  The captain turned and extended an upraised hand towards us, telling us to stay calm. He said a couple of words in slow Japanese, over and over again as the officer shouted, probably the only words he knew. The Japanese threw a rope across our starboard side and the captain took it and pulled the two boats closer. One of the soldiers leapt into our boat. The captain looked at us reassuringly.

  “Inspection, that’s all.” Another soldier boarded. They looked over every surface with flashlights and then shone them in our faces. Wei-Ming squinted in the light. Yee-Lin raised her hand to shield her eyes, and the soldier barked at her and slapped her hand away. He let the flashlight linger on her face as she blinked and stared into her lap.

  They opened everything, the chests, our bags, the boxes of fishing gear stored under our seats. They bantered back and forth, and in their voices I recognized the boredom of the young soldiers who ran the ration centre in Hong Kong. They made us empty our pockets and take off our shoes and shake them over the deck. When they were done with us, they moved to the other family.

  The routine was the same. I wanted to look back but didn’t dare. I just sat and blinked my eyes repeatedly to flush the burn from the flashlights. The family shuffled their bags and I could hear the young girl breathing hard. Then one of the soldiers spoke sharply to the other. Their voices quickened and rose. One of them barked, and the mother and girl screamed. I jumped in my seat and gripped the edge of the bench. Wei-Ming grabbed me with a shaking hand.

  They dragged the girl away from her parents and took her into their boat. The father got up and I heard the click of a rifle cocking, and then his wife pleading with him to sit.

  We sat for a long time, hearing only the rumbling of the engines and the two boats knocking against each other. I couldn’t see where the soldiers had taken the girl. It was a much larger boat than ours. Of the four soldiers I had seen on it, only two remained on deck. One swept a spotlight downriver with his rifle in one hand, and the other one faced us, resting a boot against the side of the boat, his rifle still cocked. I looked at our captain. He was leaning against the wheel with his arms folded. I met his eye for a second, and he looked away into the blackness.

  A cabin door opened and the girl came back out with one of the soldiers. He shouted at her and gestured towards our boat. She clambered over the edge and ran back to her mother. The soldiers on our boat returned to their vessel, unlashed our boat from theirs, and they pulled away. All the spotlights but one went dark, and their boat roared off downriver towards the city.

  Our boat rocked in its wake. The girl was crying and I turned to look at her. The captain leaned over and talked to her.

  “Did they touch you?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “But they took the money belt I had under my dress.”

  The captain looked at the father and cursed him. “Idiot! You should have given it to me.” He went up and revved the engine and gave us all a quick look. “We’ll be out of their reach soon.”

  I woke to the sound of the engine sputtering as it shut down. It was early dawn, very clear, and I caught the scent of kitchen fires. We had docked in Tai Fo and the captain was securing the boat.

  Wei-Ming was still asleep. She was on the deck next to me with her bag under her head. I sat up and shook her. Yee-Lin and Leuk were already awake. The captain fished our possessions out of the water with a grappling hook. The other family was gone.

  The captain handed us our bags. “They got off earlier, at Wan Yue.” He took some of the money Yee-Lin paid him and bought food from a hawker, then sat on the ground with his back to us and ate. Leuk and I picked up all four bags.

  The air was clean, and I listened to the river washing against the dock. No guns, no trucks, no Japanese. I tried to feel some kind of relief. After months of near confinement in our house, I was out in the open. I tried to tell myself leaving for Tai Fo would be just like leaving home for school, except that I was older and should be better able to deal with it. Leuk and Yee-Lin didn’t seem troubled, and Wei-Ming was just tired, leaning against my sister-in-law as Yee-Lin got her bearings. When I looked at them, I told myself everything would be all right, and that someone, a voice from up the river, would call us home soon.

  THIRTEEN

  We walked from the boat landing to a wide dirt road. Fishermen working in trios were headed the other way, down to their boats, and paid no attention to us. Yee-Lin told us our aunt and uncle lived nearby.

  There were few people on the road as we walked into Tai Fo. Some of the houses and shops were in poor repair, others bright with new paint and coloured banners. In the compact public square across which two larger stone buildings faced each other, a policeman sat asleep on a folding stool with his cap tilted over his face. Yee-Lin spoke to him. Without getting up, he rubbed his eyes and pushed his cap up to look at her. She started telling him what she could recall from Sheung’s letter, but the officer ignored her and responded with a quick, vague gesture indicating the way. Then he went back to sleep.

  We moved quickly down another dirt road. Other than the birds, the scuffing of our feet was the only sound in the air. Leuk walked ahead of me and his bag knocked against his legs as it swung. The sight irritated me and I told him to carry it over his shoulder.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said without looking back and let his bag knock even harder against his legs.

  We arrived at a small house with a banyan tree leaning towards it. The red trim around the doors and windows looked newly painted, and banners hung from the eaves. I had forgotten it was almost the New Year. I heard the thin metal of cooking pots rattling inside the house and the scrape of a chair.

  Yee-Lin set her bags down and knocked on the door, and a lean-faced woman in a grey padded jacket opened it and peered out. I was struck by the ease of her gesture, as though she would never expect to see armed men or refugees at her door. The lightly silvered hair near her temples blew over her face as she listened to Yee-Lin. The woman looked straight at her, and then she smiled and reached out and lightly touched her hand. She stepped outside and spoke warmly to us. Leuk and I bowed to her.

  “Your father and my husband were cousins, but I never met him. Come inside now. I’ve been expecting you but didn’t know when you’d arrive.” She reached over and picked up Wei-Ming’s bag. “Very cold today,” she said and made a rubbing gesture on one arm. We let the girls walk with her, and Leuk walked beside me. He looked exhausted; dark rings hung under his eyes and he shuffled through the gravel to the doorway.

  Our aunt told us to put our bags down and sit at the kitchen table. She served us rice porridge with fish. She must have known from our
faces that we hadn’t eaten like that for a long time. I ate everything. We ate from big earthenware bowls, and when I scraped my spoon against the side to wipe off the last smear of porridge, Yee-Lin warned me not to be rude. So I moved the spoon slowly over the side and held my hand against the dish to tame the scraping of the earthenware bowl.

  We shared a room at the back of the house and slept on mattresses on the floor. None of us had slept well on the boat, so we all lay down. I woke within half an hour and lay on my back, listening to the others doze. A fly crossed the ceiling and made its way towards the window. It stopped on a chip in the red paint of the frame before crossing over to the glass, and there it skated noisily over the pane, knocking itself against the leaded grille. The bedroom door was open.

  For a time my aunt shuffled over the floor directly overhead, and I listened to the clapping of her slippers. I tracked her movements around the upper floor, down the stairs, and through the hall. I didn’t want to get up and pulled the quilt up to my nose. The fly rattled against the window as it warmed in the sun. It must have been the middle of the afternoon.

  I made my bed carefully, mindful of what my father would have thought of me as I prepared to meet his cousin. I smoothed the quilt carefully before returning to the kitchen.

  My aunt was sitting at the table picking over a pile of vegetables, separating the rotten leaves from cabbages and excising black spots from radishes with a small knife. She looked up at me.

  “Chung-Man?” I bowed a second time. “You can help me here. Your uncle will be home soon for supper.” She extended her foot and pushed a stool out from under the table towards me.

  I sat down and started trimming the vegetables. A pile of leaves and soft black excisions from the radishes built up at my elbow.

  “The school is closed today,” she said. “But the three of you can go there tomorrow and sign up.”

  At the mention of school, my heart lightened. It had been three months since Leuk and I had run to the tram stop with Mr. Lee, and all I’d done since was read half-heartedly and poke through my math books.

  “Is it a big school?”

  She smiled but didn’t look up. “Not too big — good enough, though. Both my children went there. You should be fine. Your brother sent school fees ahead for at least a few months.”

  My fingers went stiff. The paring knife slipped in my hand, and I cut my thumb with it. My mother hadn’t said anything about being gone for months.

  “Be careful,” said my aunt. I looked up and saw both her worry and her irritation. “Come clean your hand.” She washed it carefully in the sink, which had an old-fashioned pump rather than a faucet, and wrapped a bandage around my thumb.

  I sat down again and picked up the knife, but a terrible chill spread throughout my chest. I sat silently at the table for several minutes, fumbling with the knife and vegetables as a mess of decayed trimmings piled up before me. My eyes pricked and I blinked rapidly.

  “Did my brother say how long we’d be staying here?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up. “No. But you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need.” She stopped her work and looked at me sympathetically. “I’m sure you’d rather go home,” she added.

  Then I felt it in my face: a terrible loosening of muscle and a sudden heat beneath my eyes. I took in a sharp breath and clamped my jaw hard, pressing my legs together on the stool. I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds, then opened them and tried to keep up with the peeling.

  My aunt got up quickly with a scrape of her stool and tossed her trimmings into a basket destined for the yard. She stood over the sink with the paring knife tucked into her belt, her back to me. I hoped she would be distracted by the swaying of the banyan outside the kitchen window.

  “Come here, Chung-Man,” she said without turning.

  I got up and let the noise of the stool mask the sound of my throat clearing, wiped my eyes, and stood beside her.

  The banyan tendrils were moving softly in the breeze, and I stared at them too, the leafless and naked whips of the massive branches hanging sadly in the late winter air, tracing weak lines in the dust.

  An hour later, Yee-Lin joined us and asked if she could help in the kitchen. A few minutes later Leuk and Wei-Ming stood nervously in the doorway, looking at me seated at the table as though by special permission. By then my aunt was making supper with Yee-Lin, who told my siblings to come in and gave them each a cup of tea. When we were all sitting together, I forgot the shock of what my aunt had said about school and started to feel better about being in her house.

  The four of us were sitting in the kitchen when the front door opened and my aunt announced that our uncle was home. The three of us immediately stood up while Yee-Lin wiped her hands on an apron. A middle-aged man dressed in a black winter jacket, white shirt, and dark pants stood in the entrance, rubbing his hands together as though washing them. He grinned broadly and welcomed us as my aunt removed his jacket, and we all bowed and thanked him for taking us in.

  I was amazed at his likeness to my father. There’s no similarity more jarring than to someone who is dead. He took only three steps into the kitchen before I recognized my father’s gait and the particular slope to the crown of his shaved head. As the evening went on, I caught myself staring at him from time to time and watching his movements. It reminded me that my memories of my father had been reduced to the geometry of gait and gesture, like the memory of a shadow puppet.

  Unlike my remote and preoccupied father, my uncle had a warm, informal manner. After dinner we sat in the parlour sipping tea and eating from a small plate of sweets. My aunt sat in her chair and watched the coals glow in a brazier in the corner. Other than the stove, this was the only source of heat in the house. Still in the jacket he’d worn outside, my uncle sat back in a large chair with his teacup balanced on the knee of his crossed leg and entertained our questions. Leuk did most of the questioning.

  “What do you do?” This ought to have been rude, but our uncle looked pleased.

  “I’m the district magistrate.” He said this with the assured drabness of someone with high status. “Do you know what that is?”

  Leuk and I said we didn’t. Wei-Ming was nearly asleep on the sofa beside Yee-Lin.

  “It means I listen to people argue all day!” He clapped his hand on one armrest to lend weight to this depleted joke, and his teacup rattled in its saucer. “Who would want to do such work? But it has to be done. People never stop fighting.”

  “Do you know when it will stop?” said Leuk.

  Our uncle looked at him. “How could it? Today I had to listen to all kinds of nonsense, and it was the same as ten years ago when I first started.” He looked into the brazier and cracked his knuckles.

  Leuk paused. “No, I mean the fighting in Hong Kong. The Japanese. Are they going to leave?”

  The dim glow of the coal brazier held our uncle’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Someone has to defeat them, and get them out of China for good.” He turned back to us and gave a firm nod, as though this bit of advice had been missing from the British strategy.

  I wondered who was powerful enough to do that. Not the British, who had left, nor the Chinese army, who I’d been told were barely hanging on to China itself. I knew nearly nothing about the Americans. From what little I’d heard of Pearl Harbor, they seemed no better equipped to dispose of the emperor’s armies. I had no answer, and in my uncle’s parlour the question didn’t seem to have one.

  The following morning, we got up early and our aunt gave us breakfast and walked us to school. Yee-Lin came along to learn the way. My sister-in-law had packed each of us a lunch in a tiffin box, and I tucked mine inside the front of my jacket to feel its warmth. My aunt wrapped a yellow scarf lightly around her head to preserve her hairstyle, and we followed it to school like a beacon. We shuffled over the gravel past dormant shrubs and bamboo, over a bridge that crossed a small stream, and into the village centre.

  In the village, we pas
sed through the same square where we had met the policeman the day before. He was still there, though when he saw my aunt he got up from his chair and straightened his uniform.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Leung.”

  She nodded at him as we passed. At one end of the square was a large, well-kept building that stood out against the shabbiness of some of the others. The paint was fresh and gleamed in the cool morning light, and the large black wooden doors reminded me of our own back home. Our aunt said it was the courthouse. I imagined my uncle at his desk in there, leaning into the elbows of his dark jacket as people arrived to involve him in their time-consuming arguments and the grievances of village life.

  Our first day at school passed quickly. I couldn’t focus because I was so tired and hungry, and also because the teacher spent most of his time dealing with unruly students and paid us little attention. There were only three classrooms in the building and Wei-Ming had at first been separated from us, until she cried so hard they put her in with Leuk and me.

  At the end of the day, Yee-Lin returned to walk us home. It was almost a straight line from the school down the main street that led past the courthouse. A large crowd milled or sat idly around the courthouse steps. They didn’t look like people with much to do. Some were women who sat on the cold stone steps with full bags of shopping from the market; others just looked bored. As we were leaving the square, the courthouse doors opened and a man came out and posted a large notice sheet on a board. Immediately, all the idlers hustled up the steps to look at it, though we kept walking.

  We spent another evening by the brazier. It ought to have bored me, but I was so tired that I was happy just to sit still before bed. My uncle listened to the radio on the table next to his chair, his head tilted as he absorbed a stream of static-strewn news about the war. The maid, who had had the day off yesterday, came in with a fresh pot of tea and retreated quickly into the kitchen. I watched her leave and thought about Ah-Tseng, and then our kitchen, and the staircase to the cellar, and the orchard in front of the house. It didn’t seem real. In my memory it was like an image preserved in ice, and in this stillness my thoughts returned constantly to my mother. I wondered how she was doing without us. Without the sound of trucks in the streets, or screams from distant apartments and alleys, the evening silence of the village became like the walled silence of our old house, and in the centre of this silence sat the memory of my mother.