Later that day, in the evening, they had walked along Leila Road, and then into the rubber plantation that had once been owned by Matthew’s father and now belonged to his uncle. It was why he had returned to Sandakan, Matthew said, to help his uncle manage the plantation. In four months, he would leave for Australia to begin university. The end of the war was still so vivid to them both, the day on which the Australian soldiers arrived, when the Japanese surrendered the town. She remembered that night, on the shore, when Matthew had described to her the burning cigarettes, his father running blindly, then pushed to his knees and shot. His face had seemed to her like a mask then, vacant, frightening to see. She had feared that if she reached out to touch him, he would splinter in her hands. And then, suddenly, he had disappeared from her life. Two days after his father’s murder, Matthew and his mother had fled Sandakan. They had taken the first steamer they could arrange passage on.
She told him about the orphanage, where her life had faded into a kind of stillness, an endless grieving, with all those that she loved disappeared. “There was a story that I told myself,” she said. “In my imagination, you had found a way into Sandakan, the way it once was. When the adults around me spoke of an afterlife, of wandering souls, this was the place I imagined. Not something in the future, but something known from before. A place that I, myself, had once seen.”
Behind them, the sun set, illuminating the ridges of the hills, trailing darkness behind it. The plantation lamps were lit, row by row, and she felt as if she were walking the corridors of an infinite house.
He described Tawau to her, his mother’s extended family, and the stilt house where they lived for three years. Then, the year he turned twelve, his mother had remarried, and the photographs of his father, the letters and writing pens, had been put into boxes and packed away. His mother, he said, needed to go on with her life, to leave the stigma of her first marriage behind. “But sometimes, at night,” Matthew said, “even now, my mother leaves the back door propped open with a stone. After the war, everything was left unfinished. We never found my father’s body and she never had the chance to bury him. He’s gone, of course. She knows this. And yet some part of her still believes he’ll come back again.”
He said that he remembered watching Ani sing the Kimigayo, the way she once traded stolen cigarettes for food. He could describe the sarong that she wore, the long braid of her hair. He remembered her when she had lived through the worst of her solitude.
They had walked between the rows of trees, stopping every now and then to catch their breath, to look up through the high leaves and thereby slow the passing of time. They talked about Mas and Halim, about the fishing boats and the peaceful routine of each day. In Sandakan, she had seen new buildings rise from the ground – the hospital and Magistrate’s Court, the administration offices – all the while unable to forget what had lain there before, the rubble and waste, and even further back, like something imagined, the old town.
In the plantation, that first kiss had surprised them both. She remembered the rush in her body, a trembling that grew, second by second, causing a pain that she didn’t recognize. The kiss lengthened, drew itself out, began again, the pain beginning to diminish, replaced by some greater feeling, hope, release.
Now, coming back to the shore, the sun was already free from the horizon. The engine hummed, and the boat sped through the water, carried by the tide. Tajuddin was murmuring a prayer, eyes half-closed, giving thanks for their nets full of scabbard fish, of mackerel and prawns. She listened to the noise of the hull, low and rumbling, like a ghost voice that could not speak above the water. From the shore, she could see the day boats heading out. A fleet of five buatan barat, painted a brilliant red, their sails taut against the wind. When Lohkman slid the boat against the sand, she looked immediately towards the road, searching for a glimpse of Matthew. “Dear Ani,” Lohkman said, as he helped her ashore. “Be careful.”
She took his hand gratefully, jumping into the shallow water.
On Jalan Satu, Matthew was waiting for her, his bicycle leaning against the fence. When she came up to him, he put away the magazine he had been reading and they began to walk together, past the stores and restaurants where the long shutters were being lifted off in preparation for the day ahead. Eventually, Matthew climbed onto his bicycle, beginning to pedal, and when he had picked up enough speed, she hopped lightly onto the back carrier. She crossed her ankles, and placed one hand on Matthew’s hip to steady herself. As they rose higher, the trees parted, and Ani could see the calmness of the bay, a silver mirror on which the clouds rested. Above them, the low moon was still visible, though pale as smoke.
Ani described the night fishing to him, and the baskets of fish and prawns that Lohkman would take to market this morning. He laughed at her description of the envious gazes that had followed them as they unloaded their catch. How the other fishermen had hurried to decorate their boats with garlands of flowers, knowing that a well-kept vessel would appease the spirits. “And it encourages the fish, too,” she said, “because if they must be caught, they’d prefer to be caught by something beautiful.”
As he pedalled, Matthew told her he had been awake for hours, had accompanied the rubber tappers through the plantation, helping to collect tins of syrup. In a few hours, when the syrup had thickened, he would return to help wash the latex and roll it into sheets, which they would hang to dry, smoking the rubber over a wood fire.
When they reached Halim’s house, he coasted towards the front door, and she slid off the back of the bicycle. It was a weekday morning, and the house was quiet, everyone had left to begin their day. Inside, Ani lit the charcoal brazier and set a pot of water to boil. Matthew had brought her a paper bag full of warm bread and pastries from the market, and he took one out, placing it in her hand. “Eat a little something first,” he said.
He took over the coffee-making, and after she had eaten, she carried the rest of the boiling water into the mandi. She filled the basin, adding a little hot water, and began by washing the saltwater from her hair. She could hear Matthew in the kitchen, taking the bundle of fish and prawns from her basket and setting them in the cool box. When her hair was clean, she twisted the length of it, then coiled it over her shoulder. She found a square of soap and began to wash herself.
He stood on the other side of the door, talking about acquaintances he had met, about his stepfather’s sons, who might come up to visit from Tawau. They were interested in helping out on the rubber plantation. “Barely ten, and they want to be landowners already.”
She tied a clean sarong around her waist and pulled on a cotton shirt. When she came out, he smiled to see her, and she went to him immediately.
“Ani,” he said. “You look happier than I’ve ever seen you.”
They came together, as they had often during the last month, their hands moving over each other’s body. She unbuttoned his shirt, and he slipped his hand beneath the edge of her sarong, moving it across her stomach, cradling her hips. She felt her body relaxing, warmth spilling through her limbs. They did not rush as they had the first time, returning again to the plantation, barely concealed by the trees. There was no hurry now, no fear that the other might vanish. In her bedroom at the back of the house, she helped him undress, then she undid her own sarong. They lay in bed together, their movements slowing, kissing, then holding back.