The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

  Knowing I’ll die soon doesn’t bother me. There’s too much now to be unburdened of, the indignity and pain. The fact is that the long contest against death is relatively easy: you win every day, no matter how, until you lose. You know who holds the prize each night when you hit the pillow.

  What troubles me is the struggle to stay continuous, to be a single person over time. How can I be certain it was really me who emerged from that boy in the horse farm, or from the one who carried the buckle? He doesn’t feel like the same person sometimes. Part of me is still back there, looking into the future as a mystery instead of the crumbling pile it is to me now. He could appear suddenly in the playground outside with my face and name, thin and dressed in rags, and I’d accept he was a separate person. I think he still wonders whether he won or lost that fight and asks how much longer he’ll prevail.

  That sound at the door is the nurse letting herself in, using the key my daughter gave her. She has a trove of keys, like a jailer, but I like her all the same. She keeps the laptop for her rounds in a turquoise bag she carries over her shoulder. And inside that is the record of all the old men and women she visits in their homes. Hundreds of people, more or less.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Leuk and I lay in separate tents in case the soldiers checked, and the loneliness kept me awake all night. A few of the older women got up at dawn to start a fire. I noticed one of them cursing when a sack of sweet potatoes was found lying partly open on the ground, and I guessed the girls had taken some.

  People didn’t speak to each other here the way they had at the large camp in Tung Koo Chow. It may have been that no one noticed the three girls were missing, or that they didn’t care, or perhaps they feared that worse had happened during the night. I didn’t go near the tent where the two women lay, though later that day I found the wife sitting up, cradling her husband’s swollen face on her lap.

  Leuk and I were sitting together beneath an old tree when Akamatsu and another soldier crossed the field into our camp, opening a small gate in the fence I hadn’t noticed before. They looked around and made faces of disgust at our conditions, though they too appeared unhealthy and miserable.

  “Who can help us?” said Akamatsu with a smile.

  Most of the women had already run off at the sight of the soldiers. An old man crouched by the fire and tended it gingerly with a stick, staring at the Japanese with unmasked hate. He scraped the tip of the stick over the embers, keeping the fire discreetly alive beneath the pot hanging over it.

  “You boys.” Akamatsu pointed at us. “You can help us out. We’ll even give you something to eat.”

  At the mention of food, I stood up. Fearing I would leave him, Leuk stood up with me.

  “We need help in the stables. Leave all these sick people and come do some work. You’ll enjoy it, and we’ll feed you.”

  We walked through the gate onto the field. It felt good to be standing on something firmer than mud, and I dragged my shoes over the grass to clean them off. Walking behind the Japanese in their uniforms, I felt ashamed of my filth. My hair was long and tickled my ears, and wherever my skin met my clothes, I felt sticky. I carefully touched the buckle under my shirt several times. Leuk was watching me. I briefly lifted the hem of my shirt to show him it was still there.

  Before we turned towards the barn, I noticed other soldiers setting up a fire and some pots, and thought longingly of the food we would soon be eating. The barn doors were wide open and the horses stirred in their stalls. Akamatsu and the other soldier stopped outside the doors, gesturing for us to go in.

  In the barn, we were met by eight older boys, tall, well-fed, and bigger than Leuk and me. Barn dust and straw clung to their clothes, and they looked as though they had been made to wait for something. In the middle of the floor between them lay coiled ropes.

  “Hey you,” said one of them. They were Chinese, from Hunan by the sound of it. Leuk and I stopped just inside the barn, until the soldier gave us both a firm shove from behind. We stumbled forward and the Hunan boys folded their arms and stared hard at us.

  Akamatsu spoke briefly to one of the boys, who stared dumbly as he listened. He answered back in a few halting words of Japanese, and then Akamatsu and the soldier left. The boy looked at us, gloating.

  “You’re going to clean this barn. Do it quick or you won’t like us.”

  One of the boys took a couple of brooms off the wall and threw them at us.

  It was stiflingly hot. The horses were in their stalls, close to us as we worked, and I remember thinking that the heat seemed to come through their scent. Two of the older boys went outside, returning soon with three other boys from the tents, around my age or younger, whom they also set to work cleaning. One of them, who looked to be about eight, had to shovel up the horse dung. The shovel was too big for his hands and it slipped, scattering a load of dung onto the floor. A Hunan boy struck him on the face so hard he fell, and while he was down, the older boy spat on him and told him he’d be killed if he made any noise. The boy stood back up and retrieved the shovel, crying the whole time, and the Hunan boys laughed and imitated him so that he cried even more. They told him his mother was probably dead and he would shovel shit for the rest of his life.

  The sound of him weeping, of his shovel scraping feebly over the wooden planks and drowning out my broom, of the Hunan boys taunting him — it all made me sick, and I began to shake. During the entire war, I was never more frightened than I was then. Leuk sobbed next to me as he swept, and the cold truth struck me like an iron bar: we would be next. Not to be hit or knocked down, not to be spat on or threatened with death, but to be told our mother was dead. Tears poured down my face and a sob broke from my throat. I tried hard to stop. I couldn’t think of anything but the Lord’s Prayer, so I whispered it in English while I swept. I focused on trying to say it right — I always stumbled on hallowed and will — and silently in my head I said, over and over, She’s alive. But even in my thoughts I didn’t dare to name her.

  The soldier came back and looked over the barn, and then issued new orders to the Hunan boys. They yelled at us to stop and put away the brooms and shovels. There was a bucket of water on the floor with a wooden ladle, and we were allowed to line up and drink quickly from it. It was sour. Then the Hunan boys made us lie down on the barn floor next to each other. Two of them picked up the rope coils and ordered us to lie with our backs to each other and tied us together at the ankles so we wouldn’t escape.

  Leuk was next to me. He lifted his head off the ground and said he had to pee. One of the boys shouted, “Go ahead!” and kicked him in the stomach. I felt a horrible, freezing pain in my midsection at the sound. Leuk seemed to be exhaling a whispered cry. Then he gasped loudly and wailed and shook violently, his legs twisting in the rope so that he dragged my feet with it. I screwed my eyes shut as hard as I could and stared into a private darkness while he screamed. I smelled his urine on the floor between us.

  Four days later, I was sitting up in our tent with the flap open, watching the horses graze. Leuk was asleep beside me. I needed to get in line for our food but didn’t want to wake him.

  Lately I had been wondering if my birthday was near. I hadn’t seen calendars or newspapers since Tung Koo Chow, and the last time I had even paid attention to the date was at our school in Tai Fo. It felt like July in the air. Back in Hong Kong, birthdays had been big events. Sheung always took a birthday photo; my favourite was the one from the day I turned three. My mother had lately caved in to the Western tradition of birthday cakes, ordering a huge one in the shape of a steam engine for me. The sepia print, which lay fixed in an album with a red cover in our library, showed me and my siblings sitting around the table, along with some children of one of my father’s business associates. My mother, Ah-Ming, and Ah-Tseng are standing behind me, all of us staring at the cake. The curtains must have been drawn, maybe to heighten the effect of the candles, for the table and everyone sitting at it have a halo of darkness around them so that Ah-Tsen
g, standing at the edge, is deeply shaded. I am in a light-coloured shirt sitting up on my knees in the chair, supporting myself with one hand on the table, while my other hand is stretched out and pointing at the cake. Leuk is seated next to me. He looks almost like my twin. We have the same cropped hair, the same nose, the same mouth. Both of Leuk’s elbows are on the table, and he’s gripping his head between his hands and staring at the cake as though afraid he may not get any. I don’t know the names of the other children. They’re all grinning and seem to disappear behind their smiles.

  I thought of this, sitting on the floor of the tent, because there was a scent in the air I associated with July, a floral smell that I remembered not from our garden but from the park off Stubbs Road where my father used to walk.

  Leuk mumbled in his sleep. The night before, when we lay down, he told me he felt better and that his stomach didn’t hurt so much. His whole midsection was a bruise of lurid colours. In the four days since we were forced to clean the barn, the Hunan boys had left us alone. So had the Japanese. As Leuk recovered, I thought constantly of the girls. I concocted a story that Yee-Lin and Ling knew exactly where to go, that they had found the road back to Tai Fo, met other Chinese wanderers and got help from them, families maybe, and that the Japanese were now too busy fighting to trouble ordinary people anymore.

  I sat with my chin on my knuckles and listened. Every day the camp grew quieter. None of the prisoners had the energy or spirit left to squabble. My shoulders ached, so I sat up straight and rubbed my eyes. I was tired all the time.

  I waited until Leuk was awake to get our breakfast. I stood in line in a light rain with two bowls and shuffled forward with the others. While waiting, I looked at the forest next to us. I heard crows and other birds screaming and rustling in the undergrowth, and occasionally saw them flying up from a spot about fifty paces in, the spot to where, by silent consensus, those who had the strength took the bodies of those who died. I hadn’t been there and hoped never to see it.

  At the head of the line, a woman sat next to a small brazier with a dented pot of sweet potatoes. I noticed her eyeing me even when I was at the back of the line. When I made it to the front, she picked up a potato with some makeshift wooden tongs and held it up for a moment, and then she leaned forward and looked at me with a concerned face.

  “How’s your older brother doing?”

  “He’s much better, ma’am, thank you.” I held out my bowl and she gave me the potato and some boiled millet. Then she extended a hand and asked for Leuk’s bowl. Her whole hand and arm were horrible to look at, covered in sores and swollen veins that crawled confusedly around her forearm. Her arms were dusted to the elbows with ash and I wondered if she rubbed it on as an attempt at medicine. That made me think of the hospital in Tung Koo Chow. I trembled violently and my vision blurred, and the potato in my bowl dropped to the ground. Before I knew what was happening, the woman was shouting at the man behind me, who had snatched the potato off the ground and hidden it in his pocket. Threatened with a blow from the wooden tongs in the woman’s hand, he gave it back to me.

  She put food in Leuk’s bowl, peered into the pot, and pulled out a third potato. She grimaced comically, then smelled it and pulled another face. “This one’s all rotten,” she said as she dropped it into the bowl. “Nibble what you can off it.” But it was perfectly fine, and I thanked her with a nod as I left the line.

  I walked quickly back to the tent and shut the flaps. We broke the extra potato in half as precisely as we could and ate it. The walk had tired me and we didn’t speak, and when the food was all gone, we sat and stared drowsily at the bowls for a while before Leuk raised his eyes.

  “Do you think they’ve used it?” he whispered.

  “Used what?”

  “The gold. Do you think they’ve sold it or used it for something? I know what I’d get: food. And a ticket home.”

  I shook my head. “Only Yee-Lin knows what it is, and she’s too careful.” She understood that she had to keep the buckle a secret from Ling and Wei-Ming. My own pressed warmly against my belly as we ate. It was fitting that Yee-Lin should carry the gold that her husband had tarnished to protect us, and when I looked at my own buckle — always in secret and making sure no one was near who might surprise me — its mottled, dull greenish-brown colour made me feel better about my own derelict condition. The once-white shirt that hung over it was thinning in spots, and the caked dirt kept the dark metal from standing out underneath.

  At the time, I imagined that I would carry this buckle forever, until my death, a small, damaged rectangle concealed beneath my soiled clothes, a secret masked by its own stains. If I had redeemed it, I could probably have bought the freedom of all the remaining prisoners in the camp, or so I believed. I had no idea how much gold it really contained. But how would I ever do that? To bring it into the light would only endanger my brother and me more. I knew I had only to scrape it gently with a rock to show the gleam beneath, and most likely I would then be killed or lose it to a thief, and our last hope would be gone.

  The bruises on Leuk’s stomach grew more garish, and I knew that meant it was healing. He still held his midsection and leaned a little to one side when he walked. He ate very slowly because he believed something was wrong inside him now, saying that the food seemed to move differently through him. He looked better to me, but when I told him that, he got angry and wouldn’t listen.

  The Hunan boys were gone the next day; I didn’t know how or why. One evening I had heard Akamatsu shouting at them in the barn, and one of the older boys crying out as though he were being hit, and then I heard nothing more. The grounds were quiet and two soldiers took over the care of the horses.

  That afternoon, Akamatsu crossed the field with another soldier. He looked around and shouted that he was looking for Leuk and me. I was taken aback by Akamatsu’s appearance: he was unshaven and his uniform was dirty. The other soldier looked even worse. Even as I detested the Japanese, I had still come to see their propriety and order as both menacing and hopeful, a reminder that not all people were as stricken and miserable as we were. There were rumours in the camp that the war was turning against the Japanese, though I had nothing to confirm this, and the thought of such things grew more exhausting every day. In these last days at this camp, my world had never been so small.

  “You boys don’t look well,” he said. He reached down and scratched his leg. I shrugged my shoulders. Akamatsu smirked at us and pointed at our bellies. “What’s wrong with you two? Sore stomachs?”

  I looked down and saw that I had automatically raised my left forearm to conceal my buckle, while Leuk was nervously holding his stomach where he had been kicked.

  “We’re just hungry,” I stammered. I tried to lower my forearm, and when I finally brought myself to let it drop, I leaned forward slightly so that my shirt hung loose over the buckle.

  “Hungry, yes. Do you remember that time when you had some chicken with my men?” I nodded. “We’re cooking some more this evening. I’m sure you’d like some.”

  My brother and I looked at each other. That meal on the road seemed ages ago, though we’d probably been at the farm less than two weeks.

  “This is your only chance,” said Akamatsu. “If you want to eat something nice, come with us.”

  We had learned to read every nuance of his heavily accented speech, and to me, at least, it seemed we had little choice. So we walked through the gate and over the field with them. As the barn came up on our right, Leuk moved to my other side so that he was farther away from it.

  Leuk had taken to whispering. It was a habit that had started in the camp in Tung Koo Chow with all its crowding, and he kept it up after that. He was afraid to speak too loud at certain times of day. Then, after the blow to his stomach, he whispered even more, and more quietly, even when we were lying in the tent at night and there was no one near us. I became attuned to his whispers like a bird heeding every rustle in the forest. He whispered to me now, as we walked to the
soldiers’ house. I didn’t answer back aloud because I knew the Japanese would hear me.

  “What day is it today?”

  I shook my head, still looking at the backs of the two uniforms.

  “I’ll stay with you while we eat, all right?”

  I nodded quickly. I looked at the soldiers’ heads to see if they could hear him.

  “Do you know why I wondered about the date? I was thinking it must be close to your birthday.”

  I looked briefly at him, smiled, and shrugged my shoulders.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “I don’t know the date. Happy thirteenth birthday, Chung-Man.”

  I touched his arm, mouthing my thanks. We arrived at the house, and Akamatsu had us walk ahead up to the front door.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The soldiers walked us into the living room, where there were two piles on the table: shorts, a shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes for each of us.

  “We found them in one of the rooms upstairs,” said Akamatsu. “Nobody needs them now. You put them on.”

  My belt buckle occupied my thoughts whenever we were within twenty feet of any Japanese. It was like a scar that ached in bad weather. I looked up at him. “Do we have to?”

  “Are you mad? Look at your clothes.”

  I hunched forward and clasped my hands together. “What if the boy they belong to needs them?”

  Akamatsu gave me a strange look. “Just put them on. In there.” He gestured to a bathroom.

  So we went in and shut the door, cleaned ourselves and changed, and I hurriedly put my belt back on. I looked at my old clothes on the floor. I had worn that shirt since Tung Koo Chow and all my other clothes had long since disappeared. It was filthy and yellowed, with black streaks along the seams. I picked it up and looked at the collar. A small tag an inch wide was sewn into it: the name of the tailor who had made my school uniform. I worried that the Japanese would see it and guess that we came from a rich family, so I ripped it out carefully with my teeth and told Leuk to do the same. We flushed the labels down the toilet and went back to the living room.