Linnear 01 - The Ninja (12 page)

So-Peng’s hands were inside the wide sleeves of his robe as he crossed his arms over his thin chest. ‘Confidences,’ he said meditatively as if the word were some new and exotic flavour he was testing on his palate. ‘Well, now, Colonel, “confidences” may have many meanings - inflections and contextual placings determine that. Whereby, my boy, I might be led to believe that you had meant by it, secrets.’

‘That may not be very far from the mark, sir,’ the Colonel replied.

‘And what,’ said So-Peng, ‘makes you think that any such intimacy should be extended to you?’

The Colonel kept his gaze steady, his eyes impaled by those he saw in front of him, and so intense became this look that at

length the other’s face seemed to disappear, leaving behind that pair of lights swimming alone in the atmosphere, hovering in lambent conversation. ‘There is, firstly, respect, sir. Then there is knowledge, knowledge sought and assimilated. There is acceptance, of what is and what was - the understanding of one’s role within the matrix. Then there is the curiosity to learn the unknowable. And lastly, there is love.’ This being said, the Colonel relaxed somewhat, knowing that he had spoken his heart, expressed himself in a manner both pleasing to himself and honouring his wife. There was naught else to be done now.

Yet when So-Peng next spoke, it was directed not at the Colonel but at his wife. ‘Cheong,’ he said. ‘I believe that Chia Sheng is calling for you. Her voice drifts up to me in this charged air.’

Without a word, Cheong bowed and departed.

The Colonel stayed where he was, silent. Beyond their frail enclosure the storm came on.

‘Cheong tells me that you are leaving for Japan shortly.’

The Colonel nodded. ‘Yes. Tomorrow. I have been asked to work with General MacArthur in reconstructing a new Japan.’

‘Yes. There is much prestige in such work. A place in history, eh, Colonel?’

‘I hadn’t thought about that, quite frankly.’

‘Do you not think,’ said So-Peng, ‘that this reconstructing, as you put it, is best left for the Japanese people to decide for themselves?’

‘That would be the ideal, of course. But unfortunately certain elements within Japanese society have misdirected them throughout the last two decades.’ When the other remained silent, the Colonel continued: ‘I am certain you are quite aware of their activities in Manchuria.’

‘Manchuria 1’ So-Peng scoffed. ‘What have I or my people to do with Manchuria? It is as a slum on the far side of the world to us. I would just as soon allow the Japanese and the Bolsheviks to fight between themselves for it. Manchuria, from my point of view, would be no great loss to China as a whole.’

‘But the Japanese sought that land as a foothold into the rest of China. There they would have built their military bases

from which they would expand.’

‘Yes.’ So-Peng sighed. ‘Their imperialist nature saddens me deeply - at least it did when I was a youth. Yes, then it was like a thorn in my side, for the Japanese way is the way of militarism. It always has been; it cannot be otherwise. It is the blood flowing out of the centuries and its imperative cannot be denied, neither by politicians’ rhetoric nor by any kind of collective amnesia. Do you understand me, Colonel? The Germans deny their racism now. But how foolish, for how can diey? Easier to deny that air is the source of one’s life.

‘China has naught to fear fronj Japan nowadays. This I tell you as a - confidence, eh? The pressure now comes from the Bolsheviks and they are to be feared more than ever the Japanese were.

‘Bushido, Colonel. Do you understand this concept?’

The Colonel nodded. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Good. Then you understand what I mean.’ He looked out at the sky, entirely grey now and moving, as if some unseen giant were waving a rippling pennant at them. ‘That is a measure of friendship, did you know that? Good friendship, I am speaking of now - not a friendship as one might find between business associates or neighbourly acquaintances. In this kind of friendship, which is rarer these days than one might believe, communication no longer becomes a problem or, as it most often is, a barrier. Do you agree with this notion of mine?’

‘Yes, sir, most assuredly.’

‘Umm. Something told me that you might.’ He laughed softly, not unkindly. ‘You know, it was a day just like this one when Cheong first came to me. She was a very small child, not even three yet, I believe. Once there had been quite a large family. I don’t know whatever happened to them; apparently no one does, for I made many inquiries over a good many years. All fruitless.

‘After a while it did not seem to matter at all. This was her family and I could not have loved her more if she were my own daughter. I have many children and now many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My goodness, so many is their number now that I sometimes confuse a name with the wrong face. But it is excusable. I am an old man and my mind

is otherwise occupied with numerous matters.

‘But I may tell you with all candour that among all my progeny Cheong has a special place. She is not the fruit of my loins but she most assuredly is the fruit of my mind, do you follow me? This is where she comes from and you must know this, come to understand it for what it is and what it portends before you leave Singapore.’

He was silent for a time now as if he were dreaming of a far-off land or, perhaps, a time long gone. The air seemed to split open and rain slanted down out of the charcoal sky, pattering against the small square roof of the garret, dripping from the diminutive eaves. The green leaves of the trees dipped and shivered under the downpour until, hissing, the world was obliterated as if by a solid wall of water. Leaning slightly over the side, the Colonel could not even make out the lower roof of So-Peng’s house. Mist, heavily laden as smoke, drifted up to them. The world was now a grey-green pointillist painting from which only brief shadows emerged as if they were watching the visualization of still-forming thoughts within some godlike brain.

‘We seem very alone up here now,’ the Colonel said.

So-Peng smiled. ‘One is never truly alone in Asia, is that not so?’ He stood as still as a statue and it seemed odd to the Colonel that this should be so, primarily because the background was in such violent motion. Spray bouncing up off the sill showered him with a fine mist and he stepped back from the verge a pace, reminded of standing at the bow of a fast cutter on the open seas. ‘The world is different here,’ So-Peng continued. ‘Our world is different. We are born with, grow up with, indeed live our entire lives with the concept of eternalness always close to us. This - shall we say intimacy - I have often thought is a two-edged sword. It is indubitably our great strength in life but also - this is another confidence - it is our weakness, I fear, our Achilles’ heel when it comes to dealing with the West. I am much afraid that too many of my countrymen underestimate Westerners precisely because they think of them as barbarians, unable to grasp fully the Eastern concepts of man, honour and the nature of time. This can be lethal. Witness the Japanese. Idiotic, what they attempted! Glorious but idiotic. But the Japanese know well the nobility of failure.

A majority of their national folk heroes would be considered dismal failures by Western standards. It is the nature of their being, the quality of their thoughts that are revered; deeds count for all, in the West. The Protestant ethic, I believe it is called, eh? Well, it is nothing to scoff at, as any Japanese would tell you now. The Protestant ethic is what defeated Japan. It was made to pay dearly for the miscalculation of Pearl Harbor. The United States was truly the sleeping giant; its wrath awesome to behold.’ He gazed out upon the frantic rain. The air was heavy with moisture. ‘We as yet lack the necessary understanding of the nature of time. We still look to yesterday when its eternalness was all; we have not yet caught up with the present.’ He laughed. ‘But give us time. We are most ingenious people. Once show us the way and there is our salvation. We are an extremely flexible people. Watch out that we do not catch you and overtake you!’

The faraway, dreaming look left So-Peng’s eyes as he turned to the Colonel and said, ‘But my personal views of philosophy are no doubt of little interest to you. Words of wisdom - I do not believe in that phrase. One cannot learn wisdom by sitting at another’s feet. One must live one’s own life, make one’s own mistakes, feel one’s own ecstasy to learn the true meaning of existence, for it is different in each individual. Fall down, get up, do it all over again in another context. Experience. And learn. That is the only way.

‘So. Enough of prattle. I am like an old woman today. Perhaps it is the weather that has made me so. I am loquacious in storms; perhaps it aids my uneasiness. Monsoon season was always a time of terror for me when I was a child.

‘A fair enough introduction. You may wonder, Colonel, as to my cultural origins. Well, my father was Chinese. Not a Manchu, thank heaven, but a cultured, quiet mandarin. He was, originally, a merchant, but because of a shrewd mind he soon became an important businessman, emigrating to Singapore when he was thirty-three. Oh, I am from the mainland, certainly; not from here. My mother was a Japanese.’ His eyes opened wide. ‘Oh, now, Colonel, you needn’t look so surprised. Those things happened from time to time. Not, I admit, with any degree of regularity. No, no. And the true nature of my mother’s origin was scrupulously concealed for obvious reasons. Her differing features my father explained away by claiming she came from the North of China, near the Russian border where there is much mixed blood, Mongol and Manchu and heaven knows what else.

‘However, of Cheong’s origins I have no specific information. Perhaps she knows or then again perhaps not. It was never discussed between us. Perhaps, one day, she will tell you. But that, of course, is between the two of you. For myself, I believe it matters little, if at all, for her matrix is here. It is where she grew up; it is what fixed her.

‘When one is able to see the matrix from which a precious stone is taken, one is invariably better able to judge the quality of that stone.’ He shook his head. ‘But this is a. somewhat cold example. Let me give you another. One meets an extraordinarily beautiful woman but, in spending time with her, one gradually finds her behaviour somewhat erratic, confusing - in short, incomprehensible. Now, perhaps, one learns, subsequently, that this same woman was the middle daughter of three. It is now possible that one has taken the first step in unravelling the mystery of this beautiful woman’s strange behaviour. And, of course, the more one learns, the less odd her behaviour becomes until, at length, it is perfectly understandable.’ He sniffed once at the air. ‘It will be over soon,’ he said. ‘Come. Let us descend.’

They sat, the three of them - the Colonel, Cheong and So-Peng - around the red lacquered table in the room of screens while Chia Sheng silently served them course after course of food. The Colonel had not in three years seen so much food at once, nor tasted one dish after another so delicious or so exquisitely presented. There was, firstly, every manner of dim sum - tiny delicate rice-dough dumplings, filled with a variety of stuffings. Then there was fish soup, hot and spicy without being in the least heavy. Thirdly, there were six kinds of rice, from the simply boiled white to a kind of double-fried version with minced seafood and cooked egg yolk. The fourth course consisted of a cold salad spiced with white horseradish and cucumber. Then came the main courses: cut fowl, golden brown, crisped, rubbed with coarse salt and herbs; broiled shrimps, hardy langoustes; cracked crabs, their shining carapaces blue and red, fresh from the boiling water. And lastly, great crescent slices of melon, the juice already running down along the sloping sides, onto the clay plates, like the rivulets of an icy stream.

At last they were through and So-Peng, pushing his rind-garlanded plate from him, heaved a deep sigh and patted his stomach. ‘Tell me about your matrix, Colonel,’ he said.

And the Colonel told him all about his father, all he had been told about the mother he hardly knew, struck down by diphtheria when he was only two. All about his stepmother, whom he despised for no one particular reason but rather for many diffuse ones. He told So-Peng about his feelings at being an only child, a concept that the other found as fascinating and absorbing as he found it strange. About his boyhood in rural Sussex and the road to school which eventually brought him, as it did to most, to London. Of his burgeoning interest in the Far East, his studies and his eventual enlistment.

‘And now,’ said So-Peng, ‘you are to embark upon a new chapter of your life. You are about to become a politician and more, a maker of history. Very good. Very good. Soon I, too, must leave Singapore for a time. My services are needed elsewhere. Thus this becomes, truly, a farewell party.’ He paused now, as if waiting for something to occur. Long moments passed in silence with just the lentitudinous dripping from the last of the rain leaving the lush loquat trees that surrounded the house.

Presently Chia Sheng appeared, holding a shadowed object close to her. When she reached the table, she lowered the object into So-Peng’s hands. This time she did not leave them but stood silently at his side.

So-Peng held the object before him, chest high, and the Colonel saw that it was a copper box perhaps ten inches by eight across, enamelled and elaborately lacquered. On its top was exquisitely painted a fiery, scaled dragon, entwined with an enormous, powerful tiger.

Still holding the box, So-Peng said, ‘It is now my duty to apologize to you, dearest Cheong, for being away from Singapore on the day of your marriage to Colonel Linnear. I have thought upon this for many months, deciding what would be most appropriate, for, as you know, everything that is mine is yours also. As it is with all my children.’ The box was now lowered slowly to the tabletop, where it lay like the most exquisite of jewels, newly mined. ‘But you mean more to me, Cheong, than all the others, for your love shines all the stronger, all the purer for the hard road you had to endure. No one of all my children, none save you, has ever wanted for anything since the moment of its birth.