The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng Read Free Book Online Page B

“You are the one who was here before me.”
     
     
I asked him how he knew.
     
     
“You carved your name into one of the rocks here.”
     
     
“I used to come here every day after school.”
     
     
He studied me carefully, and from the note in his voice I knew he somehow understood my sense of loss. “You are still welcome to do that.”
     
     
I was gratified by the invitation. I looked around as we ate. The room was not as bare as I had first thought. A few photographs hung on one wall. There were also two white scrolls that stretched from the ceiling almost to the floor. I could not decipher the writing on them, although I felt strangely soothed by its fluid curves. It was like looking at a flowing river as it twisted and turned on its way to the sea. On the floor between the scrolls a sword rested on a lacquered stand, and there was not a doubt in my mind that he knew how to use it.
     
     
A branch hit the side of the house, scraping the roof with its leaves. The rain fell with greater intensity, and from past experience I knew the sea would be choppy and treacherous for my little boat.
     
     
“Your family will be worried,” he remarked as we went out and sat on the verandah. He unrolled the bamboo blinds to leave the wind and the rain outside like disfavored courtiers. I sipped the hot green tea he had prepared. I took another swallow, liking the taste of it. I had followed his way of sitting, knees folded, feet tucked under the buttocks. My ankles began to burn with pain but I refused to stretch my legs. Even then, at that stage, I wanted to show him I could endure.
     
     
I distanced myself from the pain by listening to the layers of sound: through the clatter of rain hitting the roof I could hear the sea, water dripping off leaves, the chink of china as we lifted our cups and placed them down again.
     
     
“There’s no one to worry,” I answered. “My family is in London.”
     
     
“And yet you are here.”
     
     
I smiled, without much humor. “I’m the outcast. The half-Chinese child of my father. No, that’s unfair,” I said, trying to clarify my reasons for not following my family without sounding resentful. How to explain to this stranger the sense of not being connected to anything? It struck me at that moment that, while other children became orphans when their parents died, my future as an orphan had been cast the night my parents met and fell in love. Finally I said, “I just don’t like London, that’s all. I was there five years ago. It was too cold for me. Have you been there?”
     
     
He shook his head. “A dangerous time to be in London.”
     
     
“People say all those warnings of war are just talk.”
     
     
“I do not agree. War will break out.”
     
     
The certainty in his words and a verdict so different from that I had been hearing raised my interest. He was obviously not from these parts. I wondered again who he was and what he was doing in Penang.
     
     
I could see one of the calligraphy scrolls through the door. “Where is your home?” I asked.
     
     
“A village in Japan,” he said, and I heard the longing in his voice. I thought back to his words earlier in the evening when he said the sea was the only thing that linked him to his home and, although I had only just met him, I felt an inexplicable sadness for him, as though in some mysterious way the sadness was mine too.
     
     
A streak of lightning slashed across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. I flinched.
     
     
“You should stay here tonight,” he said, rising in one fluid motion. I followed him inside, glad to be away from the spectacle of the storm. He went into his room and came out with a rolled-up mattress, placing it near the hearth.
     
     
He bowed to me and I was compelled to return it. “Oyasumi nasai,” he said.
     
     
I presumed it meant “good night,” for the next moment he had blown out the candles and left me in the darkened room that was lit intermittently