The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  His intestines were spilling into his lap and open hands, and he clawed through the entrails as though trying to grasp moving water. He shivered violently. I stopped, unable to look away.

  “This is my family tomb,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What are you doing with the Japanese, boy? You must run. Run away.”

  His mouth fell open. His last word was flat and lifeless like a dry breeze, yet all over he was soaked in sweat and blood. The whiteness of his face and eyes was like cold fire, as was my own skin, and all the air around me, and my blood, and the sun that went on burning us as we walked the final hours of this road.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As the sun set, the air cooled rapidly, and just before dark we approached a gravel drive that turned off from the road. At the entrance, a large iron gate, which must have been very imposing once, lay in twisted ruins in the grass, its concrete support pillars knocked over and crumbling. In a ditch running beside the drive lay a blackened, windowless car, stinking of gasoline and burned flesh. The truck rumbled ahead, sounding as though it might break down completely at any moment.

  The drive ended at the opening of a rectangular wooden fence that enclosed a large, well-kept lawn about the size of a city block. We were ordered to walk along a muddy area that ran just outside the fence, beside a forest.

  Along its other three sides stood a barn, a farmhouse directly opposite us, and a bank of trees that looked as though they led down to a river. In the middle of the field, grazing freely in the cool air, stood a group of horses.

  The Japanese directed us to simple tents set up along the fence. A large bamboo latrine sat at the far end of the tents, and from its stench I guessed we were not the first captives to be brought here. The soldiers’ quarters were at the other side of the field, in and around the house. We set up in two tents, one for Leuk, Ling, and me, the other for Yee-Lin and Wei-Ming. We wanted to be as far from the latrine as possible, but other people had quickly pushed and fought to take the farthest ones, and we wanted to avoid any fighting. In the tent next to us was a man, his wife, and her sister. He was very tall, and one of the women reminded me of Ming.

  The soldiers had rushed to their own quarters on the other side, and they seemed not to care what we did. Over the field I saw them setting up cooking fires and going in and out of the house with big pots. I sat on the ground and watched them.

  A quarter of the way around the field, midway between us and the soldiers, stood the barn. Its doors were wide open, and of all the buildings on the property it seemed the best kept, or maybe the most untouched. On the field I counted five horses, two black, two brown, and one grey. I heard more whinnying inside the barn. An older boy was tending to one of the black ones, adjusting a saddle and stroking its neck. He seemed to have come from another place, ignorant of the war burning up the land and air outside the farm. He was clean, dressed in good clothes, even well-fed, and the instant I saw him caring for the horse, it struck me that no one in our group was in a state of mind to concern themselves so easily with the welfare of another animal. It was beautiful and mysterious, as though I were watching a film about the life I had once lived.

  An officer in riding clothes approached the boy, who bowed to him. The officer mounted the horse and began to ride in a wide circle, and the boy watched him briefly before heading over to one of the other horses. I could have watched this for hours. I called Wei-Ming over and she sat beside me, and there was no need for me to point and say, “Look at the horses,” because it seemed so clear that they were there for our enjoyment. When had I last seen something move that way, free and careless, living an untroubled life? I thought of Ming swaying in the river water, her hair moving behind her like the horse’s mane.

  I looked down at Wei-Ming and brushed some dirt off her cheek. She didn’t blink when I touched her face.

  The prisoners in charge of food set up our outdoor kitchen quickly. We lined up and I shuffled forward with a bowl in my hand, looking sideways at the two horses grazing in the field. The memory of rice porridge with chicken was still fresh, and that strange reprieve seemed to belong to the same world as the horses. We crouched on the ground outside our tents as I scooped the food from my bowl the way I had back in the camp, although I now paid more attention to my teeth. The old woman I had seen staring at me back in the camp now had a bad tooth infection. Her granddaughter struggled to help feed the old woman, who was starving but hissed and scratched the girl every time she moved food near her mouth. The old woman held her hand lightly over her jaw.

  Four soldiers were carrying something heavy over the field towards us. They opened a gate in the fence and two of them set down a large wooden tub half full of water. The other two poured three buckets of hot water into it and put another bucket beside the tub. They shouted and gestured for us to line up, and a soldier reached into the last bucket and took out a bar of soap.

  They pointed at the younger women and the children to go first, so that by the time Leuk and I got to the water it was already cloudy and flecked in soap scum. I still managed to get cleaner than I’d been in a long time. I hadn’t had a bath for weeks, and even though the water was murky, it still ran almost black with the filth I’d built up.

  When everyone was done, Leuk and I dragged the tub over to the fence at the edge of the field and tilted it onto the grass. The soap scum clung to the leaves, making me think of the greyish foam on seaweed I’d seen on the beach long ago. There were two horses still grazing in the field. When the water gushed out from the tub, the horses raised their heads from the grass and sniffed the air. I raised my forearm to my nose and smelled it, expecting a trace of camphor from my bath. The smell was faintly resinous, as of something put away for years in old wooden crates. I liked it and hoped the horses could smell it too. Leuk walked up to me and asked me what I was doing.

  “Smelling the soap,” I said, and he did likewise.

  “It smells old. Clean but old.” He rubbed his forearm and looked at his skin.

  We leaned against the fence and stared at the field in silence. An argument was breaking out between a few prisoners, but I ignored them. One of the horses looked at us for a moment and tasted the air again before lowering its head to the grass. I had a brief daydream of it looking up again and coming over to see us, shaking its mane and lowering its head as I extended my hand through the wooden slats. I remembered the stalls near our house that Leuk and I had walked past that day, and the cart, and the strange man drawing on his cigarette in the darkness, and the silence otherwise. The bathwater had soaked into the ground and softened it, and again I felt the stickiness beneath my shoes as I had by the cart.

  The horse didn’t move. My brother was looking at me quizzically. I glanced down, shivered, and saw I was extending my hand through the fence. Come here, I thought. The horse shook its head, stepped forward, and put its nose against my hand. It was warm and damp, and as I brushed the backs of my fingers against it, I felt its breath pulse slowly over my skin. It was a beautiful pale-grey mare with a white diamond on its forehead. Its mane was the colour of dull steel and hung neatly across its neck. I looked at the horse’s large eyes, and its unconcern for anything else seemed to open outward like a door into a vast, airy chamber. For a moment I stepped into that space, and all the burdens that I carried, my fear and loneliness, seemed to fall from me. My hand drifted up its forehead and I caressed the spot between its ears. I looked up. A soldier stood up at the opposite side of the field and stared at us with a rifle in one hand. I watched him for a second before looking back at the horse, and then I reached over and took Leuk’s hand and placed it gently on the horse’s neck.

  Leuk, Ling, and I had trouble falling asleep that night, so we went outside. Wei-Ming and Yee-Lin were slumbering quietly while the three of us sat outside their tent. Across the field, the soldiers kept up the drinking that had begun in the middle of the day. Their firepit and the moonlight were the only light. It was quiet and cold among the tents, and the latrine stench rolled heavily
through the camp whenever the breeze dropped. The soldiers were very loud, and I watched them out of boredom and apprehension as they stumbled around the yard outside the farmhouse. From time to time they wandered over to the fence and urinated. The two women in the tent next to ours bickered quietly; I had seen the man leave earlier to escape them. There was a dense forest behind us and the walk back to the road was impossible to see in the dark. Finally, the three of us climbed back into our tent to sleep.

  I would have fallen quickly into a deep sleep if it hadn’t been for the horses. In the silence, even across the field, I could hear them faintly in the barn as they bumped against the stalls and rattled the chains hanging from the barn walls. I opened my eyes and heard two or three horses neighing and also some soldiers’ voices. They were distorted and raw, and I recognized the sound of drunkenness.

  During the day the field had looked very wide to me, a huge gap between us and the feasting soldiers. But the soldiers seemed to have flown across the field in seconds. In my half sleep I couldn’t keep pace with anything. I heard them outside, boots splashing in the shallow pool of bathwater by the fence. Beside me, Ling woke quickly, her eyes wide as though she’d been shocked, and her breathing went very shallow and quick. The soldiers’ voices were garbled, and they tried to choke back their laughter. I stared at the thin tent wall. The moonlight was behind me and no shadows moved over the canvas, though I continued to hear their boots just outside.

  I lay very still and rigid, because I knew what would happen. In Hong Kong I had heard those sounds from my window, when the soldiers found women in the streets. These things always happen in a certain way. The man in the next tent raised his voice, but it was cut short with a crack. That was the only sound that made me jump. The two women screamed as the soldiers pulled the man from their tent. Next to me, Ling shook and pressed both hands over her mouth. I listened for the splash of boots again, knowing these soldiers wouldn’t be the only ones.

  Yee-Lin appeared at our tent. She didn’t even open the flap, she just reached in and grabbed us, pulling on our legs and whispering for us to get out. I crawled out after Ling and Leuk and found my sister-in-law crouching behind the tent. Nearby, two soldiers dragged a woman from a tent. I panicked because Wei-Ming wasn’t there.

  “Where is she?” I whispered to Yee-Lin, though I wanted to yell.

  “I hid her. She’s in the trees now.” For a moment I imagined her sitting in the interlacing branches of two willows, far above the ground so that everything below was blurred and washed by clouds.

  Yee-Lin took Ling by the arm and said they had to hide. She would get Wei-Ming first and they would stay together.

  “We’ll come too,” I said.

  We ran to the edge of the camp. Yee-Lin entered the trees and disappeared for a moment. She whispered Wei-Ming’s name a few times, and far behind I heard the water splash again as two more soldiers crossed the field. Yee-Lin emerged from the trees with one arm around Wei-Ming, almost dragging her through the undergrowth. She took Ling by the arm and Leuk and I followed her.

  My sister-in-law made straight for the latrine. It sat a few feet above the ground on poles, and with every step, the stench grew more horrific. Wei-Ming covered her nose and retched. Yee-Lin took a rag from her pocket and gave it to her to cover her mouth and nose, and with their sleeves covering their faces she and Ling crawled with her under the building’s floor into the thick pool lying beneath it.

  The air around us swarmed with flies, and in the clouded moonlight they were even thicker where the girls were. The ground itself, right up to the pool’s edge, shimmered with beetles and other insects that crawled around the support posts. Leuk and I both vomited.

  When they were right under the middle of the latrine, I heard Yee-Lin call out to us. I couldn’t see them anymore.

  “Go back. Don’t let them find the tents empty or they’ll come looking for us.”

  “We’ll come back for you,” said Leuk. She shouted again for us to go.

  We ran back towards our tents. I could smell the sewage on our shoes, so we stopped to wipe them off on the grass. When we got back, I guessed there were now about eight soldiers in the camp. I found two male prisoners lying badly beaten on the ground but didn’t recognize them. There was silence in the tent next to ours. We each took a tent so that neither would appear empty. I lay alone in mine and pressed my hands over my ears, counting out time in the long measure of darkness, as in a dream of infinite falling.

  The following morning before sunrise, I realized that the only things fenced in here were the horses. Unlike our last camp, there were no wires here.

  It had rained heavily the night before. The puddle of bathwater that Leuk and I had made was now a small lake. The rain had begun to fall just after we came back from the latrine, tapping against the canvas walls by my head as I covered my ears. Then it fell more heavily and chased the soldiers back to their farmhouse.

  When I’d heard the last soldiers leave, it had still been very dark. Now that there was a little light, Leuk and I crawled out of our tents and ran back to the latrine as fast as we could, and just outside it we found the girls stepping carefully out of the stinking pool, groping in the moonlight for the forest’s edge. The rain and wind suppressed the smell. In the dark, we helped the girls wash off in the downpour. Leuk cleaned Wei-Ming off, and I knelt beside Ling and scrubbed her legs down with leftover soap from the bucket and handfuls of leaves. They scratched my hands, but she didn’t complain. We crept back to our tents and lay down, and tried to sleep.

  Only Wei-Ming was able to fall asleep. The rest of us sat together in the other tent and whispered about what to do. I peeked carefully through the opening into the grey light; there were no soldiers around. There didn’t even seem to be a night guard posted. Yee-Lin had also noticed that the camp appeared to be unguarded.

  The violence of the night haunted me. Ling sat in the corner with her arms wrapped around her legs, shaking with fear on the thin canvas floor. The weeping of one of the women in the next tent drifted in, a lonely, fractured moan that seemed to filter through the wet soil and up through the bottom of our tent.

  “What should we do?” Leuk asked a second time.

  Yee-Lin shook her head. “We can’t stay here. Tonight it will happen again.”

  Ling began to sob. Her mouth drew open into a silent wail as she hugged her knees and backed up against the tent walls.

  Leuk turned to me. “But if we run, we’ll be beaten like those people in the last camp.” Tears ran down his face.

  “There’s no one guarding the exit, I think,” said Yee-Lin.

  “They’ll notice the empty tents. Then they’ll come after us down the road.”

  “I think I know where we are. Not far from Wah Ying. We can trace our way back to Tai Fo from there. No one in the village will remember us. I can take some food with us before the others get up, but that will be soon.”

  Maybe it was true that we weren’t always being watched. After all we had seen, it never occurred to me that the entrance off the road might be left unguarded. And as I listened to Yee-Lin, I understood that we had to break up again. She and the girls couldn’t stay here, and there was nothing more to be said. Leuk tried to encourage me.

  “It’s all right, Chung-Man. You and I can stay here. We need to be quick, because it’s getting lighter. Sister-in-law, do you have any money?”

  “No, the last of it was stolen in the camp.”

  Leuk quickly took off his belt, rolled it up with care, and passed it to her with both hands. She knew what it was, though it must have puzzled Ling. It would have been too dangerous to explain it to her. The buckle was even filthier than when Sheung had first stained it with the mercury. It had no lustre and was a dirty, greasy brown. Yee-Lin took it and tied it around her waist under her blouse. I took a quick peek through the tent opening and noted the colour of the sky. The sun would be up any moment.

  “Where should we meet, if we manage to escape?” Leuk sai
d.

  We discussed this quickly and agreed to meet at the Chung Shan gardens just outside Hong Kong. There was a quilt factory there whose owner had been a business partner of our father’s.

  Yee-Lin took Ling by the hand and led her out of the tent. The second they were out, I started to cry, and Leuk reached over and held my hand.

  I lowered my head and looked out the opening, watching them hurry over the mud. Yee-Lin darted into the other tent and carried out Wei-Ming, who was still asleep. Remember to take something to eat, I thought. I looked at Wei-Ming’s face leaning against Yee-Lin’s neck, thin but still untroubled. I took my hand from Leuk’s for a moment, and waved silently at her as the girls ran down the path to the road.

  A day comes when things must separate. Fruit falls from the tree and, if uneaten, the seeds work through the melting flesh to find the soil. The fetus leaves the mother, the bride her parents, and the soldier his. Families come apart. Deep inside the cemetery soil, the cadaver’s hand detaches from its arm, hastened by blind, almost vegetative vermin. The florid hues of sunrise fall away and leave the sun in all its practical and fading brilliance.

  Inside me, a tumour does the work of separation. Over time it has pushed aside organs and fused to parts that used to function normally, forcing new diversions of fluids and nutrients. The doctors can’t do anything about it. I’m too old now for surgery or chemotherapy, and besides, it would interrupt my routine. Maybe it looks tedious from the outside, but my everyday habits have become a force of nature in my life. No one else can grasp the bloody-mindedness needed to get out of bed when you feel as though your joints are coming apart, to reach the toilet on time, to bring tea to the lips without spilling or scalding, to endure the manoeuvring of a spoonful of curried chicken into your mouth and make its intense flavour override deep bites of thoracic pain. All of you who nod in agreement, you can only be the dead, the historians of these concluded wars.