The river itself was quiet but for the gargling of frogs. Then an owl skimmed soundlessly over the water and there was a sudden petrified silence as the frogs felt it pass.
The path went downhill again. We caught the scent of a frangipani tree and came to it a few moments later. Next to the tree was a wooden shack which leaned dangerously into the river. Inside was a sampan and, with Michiko’s help, I managed to set it in the water, where it bobbed, eager to get going.
“Whose boat is this?” she asked as I helped her in.
I shrugged. “I put it here for anyone to use. But no one ever comes here.”
I pushed us off and immediately the flow of the river caught the
boat. As we drifted downstream I heard her soft but labored breathing and worried that the walk had been too much for her.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said.
I dipped the oars into the water and slowed our progress. “Close your eyes,” I said. I switched off the flashlight and studied the movement of the clouds. The wind was pushing them across the weak moon, gradually filtering out its light from the sky, turning the night completely dark.
When we had drifted to the right place, further down the river, I whispered softly, “Now—open your eyes.”
She drew in her breath. A light layer of mist rose up from the surface of the river and, in the trees, shining as though the stars had fallen to earth, tens of thousands of fireflies were sending out their silent mating signals. We were caught in a frenzy of fragmented light. I heard Michiko let out a sigh and felt her hand reach for mine. I moved it away and gently spun the boat in a circle, keeping it in the same spot as beneath us the river ran to the sea.
I wet my fingers and sat unmoving, trying to discern a pattern in the fireflies’ random flight, the stillness within movement which, Endo-san said, all living things possess. I reached out and plucked one from the air, sticking it to my dampened finger, and offered it to Michiko.
She took it carefully. The insect lay in the bed of her palm, its wet wings adhering to her skin. Its light seemed to pulsate with the beat of her heart and cast a faint glow onto her face, reflecting in her eyes.
There were tears when she lifted her face to me. “How did you know?” she asked.
“Endo-san once told me he used to go to the river outside his home and watch the fireflies. He often went with a friend, and tonight I had the strongest feeling you were the friend he had spoken of so fondly.”
She blew gently onto her palm, drying the firefly. It flew off into the flurry of blinking lights that swirled around us. “I have not seen such a large number of
hotaru
for a long time,” she said. “I returned to the river near my home a few years after the war, but the fireflies had all disappeared, as though blown away by a terrible storm.”
I paddled us to the edge of the river and let the boat nudge into the bank beneath a canopy of branches heavy with droplets of light. I leaned back into the boat and said, “My father told me about this place. I never knew about it until then.”
She remained quiet for a while and I wondered if she had drifted off into sleep. The boat creaked as it flexed to accommodate the flow of the river. It was so peaceful, just sitting there in the darkness surrounded by a blizzard of fairy sparks, even as the fireflies were communicating with one another without making a sound.
I felt myself nodding off, but then she spoke. “You must know the tale of the shepherd boy in China who was too poor to buy candles for his studies at night.”
“I’ve heard of it,” I replied. “He filled a white cloth bag with fireflies and used the light they gave off to study at night, didn’t he?”
“Yes. It was Endo-san who told me about it. He had heard it on his travels to Canton.”
“I heard it from my mother when I was very young. She also told us that the shepherd always released them the following morning, and would catch different ones at night,” I said, trying to remember. “She was full of interesting stories like that. She knew many of the folktales of China, but she loved most those that involved insects and birds and butterflies. Especially butterflies.”
“Why butterflies?” Michiko asked.
“My father collected them. He had cases of them, all carefully mounted. In fact, that is why they were in that town where she caught malaria; they were on an expedition to find—” I waved my hand carelessly, “I can’t even remember what it’s called now—some rare specimen for his collection. The name will come back to me.”
“I did not see any butterfly collection in your house,” she said. “What happened to it?”
I said nothing and she was too considerate to ask again. After a short silence she said, “When you sat so still, trying to catch a firefly for me, you reminded me so much of Endo-san. He could sit as unmoving and immovable as the statue of the Buddha in Kamakura. That was how he appeared, on the day his father, Aritaki-san, was placed on the
shirasu
before my own father, who adjudged him guilty of treason against the Emperor.”
I knew of the procedure she was referring to. In Japan, in the years before the Second World War, an accused person was required to kneel before a magistrate in a sand-covered square enclosure known as
shirasu
—the “white sand”—where judgement was given. I had been told of overzealous magistrates who also carried out executions on this pristine white patch, because the sand absorbed the spillage of blood so easily and could be quickly replaced with new, unblemished sand.
“I was not completely honest when I told you that I ceased my relationship with Endo-san upon my father’s orders,” Michiko said. “In fact I disobeyed him. He was so enraged that he ordered an official investigation into the anti-government comments and statements made by Endo-san’s father. It was not difficult to bring charges against him after that.”
She leaned forward, rocking the boat. “In Japan, to destroy a person, you only have to discredit his blood-kin. So you see, in my selfish way, I played a part in the downfall of Endo-san’s family.”
I did not know how to respond. What balm would my words, uttered half a century too late, be to her anyway?
“And Endo-san sat, so immobile, for so long, a statue planted on the white sand after the proceedings were over and his father was taken away,” she continued. “He never spoke to me again, except for that last time, to tell me he was leaving.”
I touched her hand with the softness of a firefly alighting on her skin. Then I picked up the oars and took us out into the middle of the river and let it carry us slowly to the sea. We floated downstream through trees thick with burning fireflies, until they faded away and we were once again in the dark, guided only by the strengthening smell of the sea and the faint light of the moon.
* * *
It felt unsettling to have another person living in the house and I wondered if I had been too hasty in extending an invitation to her. And yet it felt good, somehow. She was an unobtrusive guest. I had never spoken to anyone of my own experiences in the war and, to my surprise I realized that she was the first person who had ever asked me to describe them, who wanted to know about them from me instead of hearing wildly differing fragments from various people and drawing their own conclusions. No one else had ever considered raising their questions directly with me.
This last realization left me shaken. Was it because I had all this time been silently transmitting signals that could not be detected or deciphered by others, and thus could never elicit the response I wanted? Even the fireflies, however voiceless they were, still managed to send out their messages and have them responded to.
A hand touched my arm, and I blinked and pulled in my thoughts—a fisherman hauling in his drifting nets from the sea. Michiko’s face was tense with concern. “I called you twice, but you never answered.”
“I was very far away,” I said. It was so effortless to admit this to her.
“It happens more often the older we get, does it not?” she said. “Maria wants you to know lunch is ready. She is not going to wait.”
As we left my room she said, “I have not thanked you for taking me to the river last night. The sight of the fireflies brought back so many memories.”
“I’m sorry if they brought you pain as well,” I said. “That wasn’t my intention.”
She shook her head. “I’ve learned to live with that. Who can look back and truly say all his memories are happy ones? To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. Do you not agree?”
She did not wait for my reply but turned and went down the stairs. I was suddenly aware that I had not been as silent all these years as I had thought. The sole reason Michiko had heard was because of Endo-san’s letter to her. He had heard, he had known. And in sending her to me he had responded.
Chapter Eight
Endo-san’s chauffeur dropped us at Weld Quay, in Georgetown harbor. The visit to Kuala Lumpur had been postponed for more than a month due to his work commitments and by now I was quite impatient to get going. We pushed our way through Chinese and Tamil dock coolies as they ran about, shouting and pushing carts of smoked rubber sheets, tin ingots, and bags of cloves and peppercorns. Rickshaws clattered past, their wheels bouncing on the uneven roads. I felt the sense of excitement of one about to rush headlong into an adventure and an unrestrained smile spread over my face. Endo-san saw it, and his eyes danced in reply.
He had chartered a small steamer from a Dutchman and we waited at the end of the pier for a boat to carry us to where the
Peranakan
lay. The small, almost flat-bottomed sampan, rowed by a Malay boy, smelled of dried fish and rotting wood. The steamer lay angled on its side, waiting for the tide to lift it out of its rest. It was small compared to the others we saw moving out to sea. A few planks of a different shade had been hammered over the cabin and the deck had a faded canvas awning to keep the sun out. Two wooden chairs were placed under it. A small banner of smoke hung above the blackened funnel.
As we climbed aboard, the sun seemed to make up its mind and rose rapidly. The light spread like golden powder flung by some sweeping hand. I looked back at the harbor. The shore was lined with godowns and braced with a line of stilts and walkways. Tiny figures ran on them, some in white vests, others bare to the waist. The Tamils wore white headcloths and their voices sounded like the cries of the gulls now flying above us. Beyond the harbor, the low humps of the island appeared like moss-pelted boulders, and the tiny homes embedded in the side of Penang Hill glinted bright as dewdrops.
The sea around us lightened, changing from the thick murkiness of early dawn to a clear emerald. Shoals of tiny fish, so translucent that they left no shadows on the sand bed, darted away at our movements. A few jellyfish floated in the water, their tentacles flowing behind the unseen currents like a girl’s hair in the wind.
The Dutchman met us on deck, his face burned to a wooden brown, his eyes the color of the sea, only clearer, brighter. When he took off his cap his bald scalp had the hardness and glossiness of a nut. He appeared to be in his fifties and looked quite strong, an impression heightened by a big hard stomach that seemed to come between us as we spoke.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Endo,” he said.
Endo-san introduced me to Captain Albertus van Dobbelsteen.
The captain looked at me closely when Endo-san mentioned my name. “Hutton, from the company?” he asked.
“That’s correct,” I replied, looking at Endo-san and wondering what the Dutchman’s story was.
The Malay boy hauled our bags aboard and tied the sampan to the steamer. The wooden boards creaked as we moved under the canvas. Endo-san sat down but I leaned over the railing, loving the wind and the flecks of water that sprayed me as the steamer gave a shudder and came to life. Like a fist, a cloud of thick black smoke punched out of the funnel and then opened into the wind, followed by a steady, gray stream that trailed behind us.
I put on a straw hat and smiled idiotically to Endo-san. I could not help it; the feeling of excitement, of something new, sang in my blood and made my head light.
“I take it you have never been on board one of these before?”
“No, never in my life.” In all my previous journeys to Kuala Lumpur with my father we had traveled by rail: across mist-covered limestone hills, through dark green forests.
“Then you are going to enjoy these few days. We won’t be rushing, because there will be a stop I would like to make.”
I waved a hand to indicate my indifference. The distance from Penang to Port Swettenham, where we would have to disembark to enter Kuala Lumpur, was about five hundred miles. We would be tracing the coastline, keeping within sight of it for most of the journey.
“The captain doesn’t seem to like me,” I said, tipping my head toward the cabin.
“Albertus? He used to sail for your father’s company up and down the Yangtze River in China until he was sacked a year ago.”
