Certainty (6 page)

As he draws near, he begins to hear their voices, softer than usual. A few seconds later, he is close enough to make out their words, but he stays hidden in the dense brush beside the road. They are speaking in broken Malay, sometimes changing to Japanese. He stops and kneels on the ground, almost behind the hut, hugging the sack to his chest.

The Japanese lieutenant is standing beside his father. Matthew recognizes him immediately, a man taller than all the rest, who, when he comes to the hut, brings meat and cigarettes. The lieutenant is speaking. He says that Australian soldiers have landed in the west of Borneo.

In his hands, his father is holding another jar, also filled with money.

“It’s over,” the lieutenant continues. “I don’t have a choice any more.”

His father’s voice is quiet, strained. “And the others who worked with me. I went into town. The offices are abandoned.”

“The others?” The lieutenant pauses, exhales a plume of smoke. He says, angrily, “What do you think happened to the others?”

The second Japanese soldier walks a few paces back, glancing into the open door of the hut. Matthew quiets his breathing, wills his body to become a part of the darkness. The moon traces the faintest light on the ground.

His father turns to face the soldier. “Come,” he says, his voice almost a whisper. “Take this money.”

The soldier laughs. “You see, we know you. That’s just what I expected you to say.”

“I thought you would have tried to leave Sandakan.” The lieutenant’s voice is casual. “I thought you understood; the most dangerous time is when war is over.” He drops his cigarette-end on the ground and puts it out with his boot. Reaching into his pocket, he takes out a box, opens it, and offers it to Matthew’s father. Two more cigarettes are lit.

The ember of his father’s cigarette wavers in the air, and for a moment his father gazes into the trees as if searching for something, an opening, a way to escape. His eyes rest on the patch of ground directly in front of Matthew. His father lifts his eyes, and Matthew knows that he has been seen. He wants to stand up and go to him. He begins to push himself up from the ground, but the expression on his father’s face, surprise, but something more, grief, incomprehension, stops him. His father closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they seem to burrow into Matthew’s body, holding him still. The lieutenant says quietly, “Where are your wife and son?”

His father does not answer at once. “My wife is with her brother,” he says finally. “I do not know where my son is.”

Time passes, and his father holds the lieutenant’s gaze.

The lieutenant looks towards the hut. He walks to the doorway, steps in, and disappears.

“Please,” his father says. “Take this money.”

The lieutenant re-emerges. He approaches Matthew’s father, taking the jar thoughtfully in his hands. His eyes drift over the trees. Matthew’s legs, frozen in a kneeling position, begin to tingle, and a wave of sickness causes him to bow his head, eyes watering. The lieutenant taps his cigarette and the ashes fall to the ground. “From what I hear, all of Tokyo is burning. There isn’t a building standing. It’s tragic, but this is the nature of war, and you and I, we are both on the losing side.” He pauses, looks down at the jar in his hand. “Maybe you don’t believe it, but I pity you. I’m offering you a choice. Come with us now. Let’s not do this here in the open.”

His father’s voice is low. “Everyone knows what happened here, this will not change the things that matter –”

The other soldier, standing by the door of the hut, has come forward. With a heavy movement, he swings his rifle into Matthew’s father’s back. His father is taken by surprise. He cries out in pain, falling forward on his hands and knees.

The lieutenant says something to the soldier, but Matthew cannot understand the words. His father crawls forward a little, then stumbles to his feet.

“I have done everything you asked. I’m begging you. I have a family –”

“I cannot help you any more.”

His father lurches forward and begins to run blindly towards the road. The soldier catches him easily and he swings his rifle up, where it remains for a second before he brings it forcefully down. His father crumples. His arms reach up to shield his head and Matthew can no longer see his face.

The lieutenant’s left hand, holding his cigarette, draws a line in the dark, and stops. The soldier sets his rifle casually on the ground. In his hand there is now a pistol. He puts the pistol against Matthew’s father’s head. His father starts to say something, three or four words, but Matthew hears only “
Tolong
,
tolong
. Please,” before the first shot is fired. His father’s body shudders and falls forward. He hits the ground chest-first, both arms outstretched, the hands open. Matthew scrabbles at the grass as if he might crawl towards his father, but his fingers close around air. The world empties before the second and third shots. While the sounds are still audible, the first soldier drops his left hand and lets his cigarette fall to the dirt.

The other man is picking up his rifle. They are speaking to one another in low voices, and then his father is lifted off the ground, swung and tossed into the back of the truck. The two men climb into the cab, the lieutenant carrying the jar of money. The engine starts, the headlights sweep the road. The truck reverses, bearing down on Matthew, the lights freezing him. The gears sound and the truck begins to roll forward. The truck turns down the road and drives away.

Matthew lies in the dark, unmoving. The sound of his breathing lifts away from him. The truck’s wheels have raised a cloud of dust and he can taste the road in his mouth, in the back of his throat.

His legs ache with the effort, but he pushes himself to standing. In the dark, he fumbles for the bag and pulls it over his shoulder. Then, turning, he walks slowly in the direction of the plantation.

All his thoughts are clear. He goes first to the storehouse where sheets of rubber hang to dry, and there he finds a small shovel. Then he goes back and begins to count out the rows. His eyes have now adjusted to the darkness. In front of the thirtieth tree of the thirtieth row, Matthew sets down the sack. There are notches in the wood, thin diagonal lines where the rubber has been tapped. All around him, he hears the itching sound of cicadas, a bird, unidentifiable night sounds.

In his mind, his father says again,
Make sure no one sees you
. Matthew stares into the darkness, then kneels on the ground. He traces an outline in the dirt, making a circle, then he begins to dig with the shovel. His father comes towards him.
Please
, he says to Matthew,
go quickly
. This is the place where he will plant the money. It will be like the seeds that his father warned him not to swallow, a strange plant growing from an unexpected place. After a few minutes, Matthew has made a small opening in the ground. Not enough. It has to be so deep that he can stand in it, with only his fingertips brushing the air.

His father gets to his feet.
Take the money
, he tells the men. He gestures towards Matthew, and Matthew steps out from his hiding place and onto the road. He goes to stand beside his father. His father places his hand on Matthew’s shoulder.

Minutes pass, perhaps hours. The plantation falls away, and he returns to the house on Jalan Campbell. High on a shelf, there is a wooden box whose contents he cannot see. All he hears is the scratch of a record, then a woman’s voice. Through a doorway, he glimpses his parents standing together, his mother holding a jacket open, his father sliding his arms into the sleeves. She runs her hands across his back. He turns to face her. Matthew climbs down into the hole that he has made. There are places so narrow that he has to use his body to widen the opening. When he is standing at the bottom, he reaches his hands up and turns his face towards the fresh air. The dirt surrounding him radiates heat, and he realizes that his entire body is sweating, he can feel the drops running from his hair, down his face and neck. Gripping the surface, he braces his knees against the walls of the hole and forces himself out. He feels no pain and no fatigue. His arms lift him out of the ground and he does not feel the effort.

Lying on his stomach, he lowers the sack as far as he can, then lets it go, hearing it strike at the bottom of the hole. The glass jar does not seem to break. Slowly, he replaces the dirt until the hole is completely filled. He packs the earth down carefully, using his hands and feet to remove any signs of disturbance.

As he does this, he listens for men or trucks, but even the cicadas have stopped their singing and the air is still. Again and again, his thoughts return to the burning embers, the rifle on the ground and the pistol in the soldier’s hand, but he pushes these images away. He has swallowed something wrong. Inside his skin, something that he cannot contain is pulsing and breathing, but there is no way to let it out.

Walking back, he sees a dull light flickering inside the hut and realizes that his mother has returned before him. He lingers outside, staring at the faint candlelight. Dirt is caked to his skin, and he stands in the grass, crumbling the pieces off with his hands. He has lost his shirt, but he does not remember how or when. There are no sounds of planes or gunfire; the night is extraordinarily calm, peaceful. Matthew gathers himself together and walks forward. Alongside the hut, he sees, as if from another time, the bicycle wheel and the stick lying beside it. He pushes open the door.

On the table, a low candle wavers. He stands motionless, looking into the shadows. The hut is empty.

There are two plates of food, rice and meat. The food smells so fragrant, so good, a dizziness comes over him, but he cannot bring himself to eat. One of the settings, he realizes, is meant for his father. A third dish, his mother’s, is sitting empty but unwashed on the other side of the table. His mother has been here, but now she has gone, and this realization makes him pause, eyes stinging. Did the Japanese soldiers return? But there is nothing out of place in the hut.

Shaking, Matthew walks to the other side of the table. Beside his parents’ bed, the metal tub has been filled with water; it is a still lake in the half-darkened room. He touches the surface, the water is warm. He can smell his mother’s soap, the small perfumed square that she keeps wrapped in paper. When he has taken off his clothes, he climbs into the bath. The panic begins to subside, and he slides down until only his mouth and nose remain above the surface, the dirt from the plantation dissolving off his skin. He keeps his eyes open as the room moves in waves above him.

Go now. Quickly.
The soldiers in the truck drive away, and their lights sweep across his father, who stands on the steps watching them leave.

Matthew closes his eyes. His father falls backward. His legs dangle loosely from the soldiers’ arms.

Much later, a caravan of vehicles passes by on the road outside. The walls shake, and small ripples start to form in the water, expanding out, moving against his body. Matthew climbs out of the tub, dries his body with a sarong, and sits on his bed. He is waiting for his mother; she is getting ready for Sunday mass in a time before the war. She has a pearl necklace that rests in a cushioned box. When she puts it on, she turns first one way and then another, admiring the play of light along its length. In St. Michael’s Church, she sits on the bench beside him, and he leans his face against her body, the fabric of her dress shifting against his cheek.

Ani says, The boy buried his treasure in a hidden place. In this place, all the trees were silver, and fruit fell from the trees and lined the ground. For months and months, the boy cared for his secret. He nourished the soil and watered the dirt. One day, the first leaves appeared. The stems grew strong and the leaves became bountiful.

This is the treasure that allows the boy to return to the other side. For when he opens the leaves, pieces of gold fall into his hands. He has been trapped here for many, many years. As many years as it takes for a boy to grow into an old man.

He falls asleep to the sound of more trucks on the road, and he returns to the bridge his mother carried him over, the basket that rocked him back and forth, the sound of rushing water taking hold of him. This memory floods his vision. He opens his mouth and finds he can breathe it in, finds that the water miraculously pours out of his body, out of his skin.

Sometime in the middle of the night, he wakes hearing the door opening. His mother is there beside him, her hand smoothing his hair, smoothing the sarong that covers his body. She says that she has been down to the harbour. She has seen the Australian soldiers arrive in Sandakan. He looks up at her face, so beautiful to him, and he does not know if she is crying out of joy or sadness. She tells him that she has searched all night for his father. “I wasn’t here,” she says, her voice catching, tearing. She repeats the words, trying again. He tries to speak but no sounds come. She cups her hand against his head, as if to hold his thoughts, as if to stop them from sliding loose, and eventually sleep takes over once more.

He wakes expecting to see his father. Matthew opens his eyes, already picturing a day like every other: the radio in the room, the wire reaching up, his father concentrating on the sound. Instead, the room is still. He realizes that he has slept far longer than usual; the sun has risen, and he can see the light filtering in through the slats of the hut.

On the far side of the room, his mother is brushing her hair. It falls past her shoulders, down her back, and she gathers it up in her hands, slowly twisting it into a complicated knot. Her arms are too thin, too fragile. She is not yet aware of him. She faces the wall, as if imagining a mirror there, and brushes the stray hairs back from her face.

His mother turns and crosses the room. He tries to tell her that the one they love is not dead, that he is only hidden away, safe. Her eyes are dark and swollen. When she puts her fingertips to his cheek, her hands are trembling. She tells him that all the Japanese have gone away, they have given up Sandakan. Under cover of night, they abandoned the town and then disappeared. “Rest now,” she says, putting her lips to his hair, holding on to him. Without realizing it, she repeats his father’s words. “Everything will turn out for the best.”