The Black Isle (40 page)

My puppet theater was done.

I was led up the stairs as though to the gallows. The guards knew I needed no handcuffs. If my lifeless eyes didn’t tell them this, then it was my leaden feet, which took every step as if it were my last. I climbed the final stairs on all fours and had to be lifted by two sets of hands into the bed chamber.

But I had a burst of life left in me. The second I heard the door lock, I rolled myself off the bed and began crawling, not stopping until I reached the jewel box on the dressing table. I avoided looking at the mirror, fearing that the sight of my face might cost me my nerve.

Hidden beneath strands of pearls and diamond brooches sat Li’s old toffee disk. I dug it out and paused to admire it for a moment—not for its tarnished gold wrapper, whose beauty had long since dulled, but for its unknown power. This little thing had held my sweet brother captive since we were seven years old.

It had to be poison. What else could it be?

The wrapper came off with some difficulty. Tiny specks of gold foil clung to the ancient brown coin. Traversed with intricate fault lines and ridges, it had obviously melted and grown solid again. It had its own topography—even history. This seemed to me apt as it would probably take one world to obliterate another.
Poison, Poison, work your dark magic now
…

I eased the toffee onto my tongue and braced for a wrenching bitterness. But what I tasted was only a familiar buttery saltiness, followed by the concentrated smoky-sweetness of burnt sugar. The disk crumbled into powdery clots as soon as my saliva seeped into it.

I chewed on these gritty, desiccated pieces, bracing for pain to settle into my organs. It was like eating honeyed crayon.

I lay flat on the bed and waited to die. But there were no pangs, no eradication of the senses, only more thirst. Already parched, I now craved water to wash down the cloying sweetness lining my mouth. Waves of exhaustion engulfed me, and I gave in to them, relieved. I glanced at the clock: It was 11:05 in the morning. I didn’t even bother to say good-bye.

I was jolted awake by the great clatter of a motor racing up and screeching to a halt.

I was still in bed. I hadn’t died. And the world, it seemed, hadn’t died either.

Had I dragged myself to the window and peered out, I might have seen a jeep in the driveway, its noisy engine puttering. But my body was still weak, and I chose to remain in bed. I heard rushed footsteps, then an urgent banging on the front door. The commotion moved indoors. Under the floorboards, an agitated volley of questions sounded. But there came no answers. As quickly as it had come, the jeep revved its engine and sped away, tires squealing as it nearly lost control at the gate.

The ensuing silence hung tensely in the air.

Moments later, loud footsteps clopped up the stairs. They were unmistakably Taro’s. He entered the room, wild-eyed, his gaze locking onto any object that might give him his bearings—anything but me. He closed the door and began pacing with the fretfulness of a beast that had been cornered but was not ready to surrender.

He looked stunned. The sadistic glee of not so long ago was replaced by the bewilderment of a boy who’d just been told his parents were dead. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he fought back a wail. Knowing his moods, I felt sure that rage would erupt in a matter of seconds, if only to cover up the embarrassment of these tears.

But no.

“Hiroshima,” he whispered to himself. A high-pitched sob trailed his words, and he gave in to it, his entire body shuddering. He turned to me, incredulous, and repeated that strange word, now in the form of a question: “Hiroshima?”

From downstairs, pistols began firing, every bit as loud and sickening as the shots years ago when Mr. Wee and his friends were lined up and killed. Only now the bullets meant something different. From his grief, I knew Taro had given his soldiers the immediate order to die. Round after round, a young voice screamed out some kind of oath that was silenced with a heart-stopping bang.

Death brought Taro no joy this time. He jumped at each individual blast, murmuring with tenderness the names of his dead boys.

The Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly killing a hundred and forty thousand people on the ground. On the morning of August 9, they dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, which snuffed out eighty thousand more.

I will leave the historians to make noises about the disproportionate numbers of Japanese civilian lives lost. But nothing about this brutality surprised me. Under the cover of war, human beings are capable of greater monstrosities than any natural—or supernatural—force. What’s pertinent to my story is that these bombs ended Japan’s thirst for war. The Imperial Army was forced to surrender.

On the Isle, however, nothing really changed; in many cases things got worse. Die-hard soldiers, fancying themselves
ronin
, went on last-minute rampages at schools and hospitals. Islanders caught removing Japanese flags were gunned down.

I continued to be a prisoner. Taro had quickly regained his calm after the suicides of his boys and gave no hint of what he intended to do with me. It would have been as easy to kill me as to let me go, and both options must have tempted him; he chose neither. Even after the war had effectively ended our “marriage,” he kept me in bed with him. He continued to sleep next to me, though sleep was all he did. I thought of escape, but he watched me like a hawk.

The night before the Imperial Army’s official surrender, Taro decided to throw a party. Everybody was to gather for one final drink at the beach house.

“Don’t worry,” Taro said as he led me to the car. “We’re not going to make you perform this time.”

The house looked desolate. The tin soldiers were nowhere. I could only guess that each had embarked on his own afterlife of cherry blossoms. These valets absent, I was ordered to help lug in cases of sake, cognac, and champagne. From where these bottles had been pilfered I had no idea, but the supply appeared to be bottomless. There was enough alcohol to give cirrhosis to an entire battalion, let alone a group of ten.

Before the guests arrived, Taro pulled me aside with a rigid formality I found portentous and recited a Japanese poem from the fifteenth century, supposedly uttered by a military scholar just after he’d been stabbed:

Here was the first overt indication that the ceremony would not be a happy one. The next sign was that, like Taro, the ten guests arrived in formal regalia, complete with medal-encrusted sashes and polished brass buttons. This time, they had also brought along their “wives,” whose condition disturbed me even more: Every one of these pretty young girls staggered around with lifeless expressions, barely able to cross a room without being escorted by hand. Not one could carry out a conversation.

“Do you think they’ll free us tomorrow?” I asked the most lucid-looking of them.

She nodded vaguely.

“Where will you go?”

She frowned, then nodded again.

Nobody was expected to play waitress tonight. The party was a free-for-all. Unopened bottles lined the sides of the sitting room three or four rows deep. Every man grabbed his own favorite or two and guzzled it straight from the lip. Despite their professed chauvinism, when given the choice of Dom Pérignon or sake, all of the officers chose the champagne.

Yet regardless of the loosening brought about by drink, the men continually stole glances at their watches—ever mindful of their remaining minutes. The anxiety was most transparent in Taro, whose grinning only emphasized the tightness in his jaw. As the midnight hour neared, a hush fell upon the room, as if the haze of drunkenness had reached its logical extreme and come out the other end—as clarity. The men poured champagne down their throats, hoping to recapture a happier state of oblivion, but no matter how much they drank, clarity refused to leave them.

My body sensed it: Death was coming. I didn’t know how or when it would arrive, but I wanted no part of it now. I edged my way toward the rear of the house, hoping to make a quiet getaway.

Taro intercepted me in the kitchen. He was standing by the back door, all alone, holding a bottle of Russian vodka in his hand.

“Where are you going?” He seemed calmer than his friends, but this did nothing to reassure me.

“I have to use the toilet.”

“Well, this is not the way to the toilet, is it?” He knocked back a swig of his vodka, his eyes trained suspiciously on me. “Give me your shoes.”

I surrendered my ballet flats. To further reassure him, I grabbed his vodka bottle and threw back a gulp. I strode briskly toward the toilet, and when I turned back, I saw that Taro had craned his neck to eye me the entire way.

Safely inside the bathroom, my pulse was racing. There could be no doubt—something was to happen at midnight. I glanced at the round-faced electric clock on the bathroom wall, its motor issuing a chiding
chick
!
with each passing second. Four minutes to midnight.

It was now or never. I pushed open the window as wide as it would go, climbed onto the sink, and squeezed myself out limb by limb, scraping my arms bloody.

There was no ledge to lower myself onto. The ground was eight feet below me.

I jumped. I landed clumsily, the wiry grass scratching my hands and bare feet. But this was no time to fret about bruises. Without looking back, I sprinted to the surf’s edge. The martyrs were visible in the dark water, their heads protruding above the high tide like a long line of stepping stones.

“Help!” I called out to them. “Help me, please!”

None of them turned, of course. They remained forever imprisoned in their own heroism, their own doom. I had only one hope. I ran for the shelter of the old rock boulders. I knew I could stay there overnight, maybe even until the British were restored.

I was halfway there when I felt my feet being lifted off the ground. The air was hijacked by an enormous explosion. Sharper and louder than any gun. As I flew forward onto the sand, ears ringing, the world around me shook. Had I been hit? I patted myself, searching for wounds. None. I looked back. A sandstorm came swirling toward me, whishing into my eyes like a solid mist.

When it finally began to settle, I saw the beach house. Greedy orange tongues shot out of every orifice, melting windows and doors. They licked up and down the exterior walls, lashing out at the black night. I was grateful for the blaze’s thunderous crackle, for it spared me the cries of those within.

As much as I wanted to escape him, and as much as I hate to admit it even today, I wept. Taro was in that burning house. All I could think about was what excruciating pain he was suffering. When it came to embracing death, Taro had been most un-Japanese. It was hard to picture him stoically giving in to the flames like a Hindu sati on her dead husband’s pyre. So how did he face his doom? Screaming in fear?

My heart was pounding. Had I been any slower on my feet, I’d be in there myself, reduced to clumps of ash, indistinguishable from the very men who’d made me a slave. Trembling, I forced myself to stand up and continue running to my black old cave. I’d search for Taro’s ghost tomorrow.

When morning broke, I brushed off the dusting of sand that had settled on me while I slept and walked along the shore, keeping my distance from the smoldering mouth of the beach house. I didn’t want to see the bodies; I was after their ghosts—and of course there were ghosts. Four stood in the blackened ruins, wailing. No Taro. Yet, having lived with him, I was positive about one thing: Taro would have a ghost. That man deserved a haunted fate.

Incredulous, I combed the beach for him again before sluicing inland, dismayed and unfulfilled.

Already the sun was beginning to bake the roads; they burned like coals against my bare feet. About two miles in, I came upon a man’s corpse, facedown on the side of the road. My heart leapt, but it wasn’t Taro. All the same, I took his shoes. The loafers were at least two sizes too large but better than nothing. I thanked his spirit, who sat by his body holding a silent vigil, and walked on.

The walk to the city was fifteen miles. Never before or since have I experienced the Island as intimately as I did that hot August day, going on foot from its salty east coast to its southern-central commercial heart. The landscape wasn’t picturesque, and beneath the dull equatorial light, not a single vista charmed my eye. Yet after years of confinement, I felt something in me stir.

You can learn a lot about which parts of your country are favored by the powerful just by looking at its roads, signage, foliage, and the virulence of its mosquitoes. The British had cared nothing about Little India and Kampung Klang, where the Malays lived, and only a little more about Chinatown, whose denizens were thought useful. In all three areas, there were few trees, uneven roads, and drains fetid with waste. I’d known all this, of course, but on this day—a new day of freedom—I had an awakening. I believed I could help things get better, or at the very least, fairer.

As my blistered feet brought me closer toward the city, it seemed as if my surroundings were gradually progressing, pigment by pigment, from a world of black and white to a universe of color. Wonder World was the turning point. Its bright red battlements seared their way into my consciousness. The gates had been flung open, and throngs were clamoring to get inside the walled city, some no doubt out of prurient curiosity, but most simply because they now could, and freely. Having entered, they then pushed to get out, their faces darkened by the sight of the desolate barns where the Isle’s wives, sisters, and daughters had been imprisoned and raped.

Now it was everywhere else that felt like an amusement park. Men and women jammed High Street, crowding the sidewalks as they spat at Japanese signs and competed to tear them down. Tooling along, cars honked, skidded like bumper cars, blithely ignoring the rules of the road.