From the corner of my eye I watched Kon gather all his will, a resolve which I doubted I would ever possess. Once again he lifted his sword to the sky, his stance correct. Blood from the gunshot wound soaked through his shirt, to be washed away instantly by the rain, as though the sight of it offended the gods.

He swung the sword down in a movement so perfect Tanaka would have commended it. I saw the sensei smile, his eyes closing just before the last moment, and I had a feeling that he approved. His body fell over and I let out a breath and closed my own eyes. I did not see Su Yen raise her pistol again. She fired twice and Kon staggered, spun around and fell off the edge of the levee into the river. By the time I reached the edge he was gone, swept away by the torrent.

Yong Kwan was grinning with satisfaction. "The girl knows who is going to take care of her. Don't you, Su Yen?" He held out his hand to her and after a moment of hesitation she went to him.

A shaft of immense pain opened up and an overpowering rage, as turbulent as the river, shook me. I smashed Yong Kwan's face with the hilt of my sword, knocking him unconscious. I faced Su Yen. "I should kill you, you little whore," I said coldly.

She was expressionless, her hair in strands over her face. In the rain I could not be certain whether she was crying, as I walked away.

I searched the stretch of river for my friend, shouting his name. But there were only spinning tree trunks and fallen branches riding the current. It was useless. I turned back to the jungle and made my way home to my father.

It took me three days to find Ipoh again. I repeated Kon's instructions in my head, sometimes hearing his voice and thinking I had gone mad, possessed by the jungle spirits that my amah used to tell me often played tricks on people who had gotten lost, making them walk in circles for days, distracting them with false sounds and laughter. There were times when the rain would stop suddenly, leaving the leaves dripping like taps that had not been turned off properly. Then the sun would raise steam from the undergrowth, creating a perverse kind of fog that was not cold but hot and heavy, impossible to breathe in.

I was aware that I was lost, and I sat on a root, unable to move, immobilized by despair. The rainforest refused to release me, and all around me the straight columniation of trees, thousands of years old, continued their reach to the sun. I grieved for my friend, but there was no one to bring me comfort.

I talked to Endo-san and asked for his help, knowing I was on the edge of succumbing to defeat. But the thought of my father made me get back on my feet and I walked on, trying to use the sun to give me direction. After a short distance I found shelter in the hollow of a fig tree. I sat down, slowed my breathing, and began to meditate.

I did not know how long I sat there, but the noise of aircraft brought me back. I opened my eyes, looked up through the canopy of leaves, and saw two of the largest planes I had ever seen roar past. I made note of the direction they were flying in, feeling a jolt of hope as I followed them through the trees. Within an hour I heard explosions, and knew that the British had returned, this time to complete the work they had abandoned. I followed the twisting spires of thick black smoke that braided upward into the skies and knew Ipoh was within reach.

The planes-I was told later that they were Lancasters and Halifaxes, capable of great distances and used for bombing missions-circled Ipoh, dropping their bombs on Japanese-occupied buildings. I said a prayer of gratitude to Isabel and her friends who had supplied precise information to the British. I came over a rise and Ipoh lay before me, its hills dulled by the rising gray clouds. Fires were burning and, on the wind, I heard the faint sounds of sirens, like the cries of an awakened baby.

I sat and waited until the planes circled one last time and flew away to the west, back to India. I walked into the town of Ipoh, passing little kampongs where I met smiling children and old men, waving to me. They knew that the Japanese were finished.

In the center of town, in front of the padang, I entered the railway station and went to my hotel. The hall porter's desk was surrounded by hysterical Japanese women and I pushed them away and asked for my key. The Indian hall porter held on to the key, and looked at me steadily. "Maybe you should not go back to your room," he said.

I held out my hand for the key and thanked him. "I have to."

They were waiting for me, Goro and the officers from the Kempeitai. He grinned and ordered an officer to handcuff me. "Endo-san informed us that you would come back for your father," Goro said. "You will be charged with spying, with assisting the MPAJA and with the murder of Saotome-san. If found guilty, you and your family will be publicly beheaded." His smile turned into a sneer. "You will be found guilty, I can assure you. And I will be your executioner."

Chapter Fifteen.

I was taken in a military lorry to Butterworth, where Goro ordered me onto a boat. I felt only a strange sense of serenity as we crossed the channel into Penang. My heart was calm, as was the sea, and it seemed as though we moved across a surface of glass. Even the jellyfish floating in the deep green waters seemed to hang suspended in stillness. I neither felt the wind, nor saw the clouds resting on the peak of Penang Hill, where the tiny houses shone and glittered in the sun.

I felt the sound first, a deep, almost inaudible hum, vibrating through the membranes of the air as the Halifaxes came over, flying unnecessarily low, certain of their invincibility. I saw their shadows move over our boat, then over the surface of the sea as though some immense creatures were moving beneath us. In their wake air and water were disturbed and sea spray blew into my face. Goro ran out from below deck and watched the planes as they headed for the docks. He jumped below again, where I heard him attempting to frantically radio the air force.

The first Halifax reached the docks. Seconds later explosions rocked the harbor. We were so close I felt the singeing heat from the blast. The other two planes flew on into town. As clouds of smoke curled up into the sky my heart ached at the destruction. In their indiscriminate bombings in Europe the Allied Forces had killed thousands of civilians. Now as I watched I realized that this time, as in Ipoh, their selection of strategic locations was unerring, the targets of their bombing precise. The Japanese naval base was completely destroyed and the air above the army barracks around Fort Cornwallis shimmered from the flames burning up the military camps. The Fort itself, which housed those prisoners of war who had not been sent to the Death Railway, remained miraculously undamaged. This show of precision lit a bright flare of hope within me. I felt that Isabel and Auntie Mei and their friends had somehow played an effective part, that their deaths had not been fruitless. In the wind, Isabel's laughter, the laughter I had known all my life, came to me. It sounded so rich and filled with joy, with all the wondrous things of life, that I felt a lightness of heart within myself.

There was no harbor left when we arrived. The boat swayed in the shallows and a sampan came out to carry us in to land. Debris and wreckage knocked against the hull as we neared the shore. The stench of burning buildings choked us and the air was dark with thick columns of smoke. Embers, some still curling with fire, floated away with the wind. I heard cries and screams. A corner of Hutton & Sons had been shorn away, exposing the offices on the top floor.

I was pushed up the stone steps from the water's edge. I stood on the pier, trying to absorb and comprehend the extent of the destruction. Everything seemed to be charred. The roads had caved in completely, and vehicles had been thrown around by the explosions; some lay on their roofs, wheels sticking into the air, while others had been crushed into unrecognizable shapes.

The Halifaxes had turned around and were coming our way again. We saw their black eggs drop from their bellies, accompanied by a thin whistling sound. The first one hit the arms depot, and we were thrown off our feet by the resulting chain of explosions as the ammunition ignited.

A Japanese guard was holding onto a railing. The next moment he let out a cry; a wicked looking piece of shrapnel, two feet long, sprouted from his chest. Blood spurted from his mouth as he pirouetted and collapsed. There was a clatter almost like rain on a tin roof as the row of godowns behind us was hit by flying debris. The thin corrugated metal walls folded under the assault and, as they crumpled, they brought down the roof. I heard the sounds of a hundred glass windows breaking into clouds of fine, powdery fragments, filling the air like dust from a vigorously beaten carpet.

I dropped flat onto the ground, between two overturned drums of oil. The planes flew past, the ground trembling. And then they were gone.

The persistent ringing in my ears faded. I heard my breathing first, then the erratic beating of my heart. My legs felt rubbery as I rose to my feet. Goro managed to look dignified even as he struggled upright. In his eyes I saw something that until now I had never seen in any Japanese: defeat.

He gathered his people and together we made our laborious crossing over the burning roads. He stopped the first car we encountered, hauled out the hapless Malay driver and drove to government headquarters. Along the way I noticed the faces of the people of Penang. Hope had erased some of the weariness of the Japanese Occupation. Their shoulders seemed straighter, their chins higher. I was glad of this subtle transformation.

In the headquarters everything was calm. It was as though they were not aware of the bombing; perhaps they equated it with the earlier sporadic bombings carried out so halfheartedly.

I was taken into Endo-san's office. He was staring out of the high glass windows, looking at the lawns and the bougainvillea. A macaque sat on the glistening grass, eating a rambutan, its tail beating the ground gently. Probably from the colony in the Botanical Gardens, I thought with detachment.

Endo-san's hair, I noticed, shone brighter than ever. He was dressed in his gray yukata, trimmed with subtle threads of gold, and a black hakama.

"Get out," he ordered Goro and then sat down behind his desk. I stood my ground.

"Tanaka-san, your childhood friend, is dead," I said. I saw him flinch before covering his emotions.

"How?" he asked.

I took him from the events that had led to so many wasted lives to the final words of Tanaka before his death. Endo-san looked down at his hands lying on the table. Finally he said, "You should not have let Goro escape. He made his report not to me, but to Saotome-san's office. We could have avoided all this."

"Everything was done in vain, then," I said.

"You know why you were arrested," he said softly.

I nodded. "How is my father?"

"He is in jail."

"You said you'd watch over him," I said, and the rising anger in my voice could not be controlled. "Let me see him!"

He picked up a document. "You have been accused of passing military and government secrets to the triads. Do you admit this?"

I made no reply, thinking only of my father.

"Which triad? Towkay Yeap's?"

"It doesn't matter, Endo-san. The war is lost. It's time you went home."

He looked tired suddenly. "I hope so. I want to go home. Once the war is over at least my duty is done." His voice turned soft and his face followed. "I wish to see Miyajima Island again. I want to walk through the fields where I grew up, the streets where I played, and talk to the people of my village. I just want to go home."

I felt a sharp stab of sorrow, for his words had struck a soft resonance, like an aged monk gently sounding a bell in a temple far away as I recalled what Kon had said. He too had only wanted to see his home again.

"Let me see my father," I said, feeling exhausted.

He came closer to me and held out his hand. I hesitated, and then took it. He brought me to him and gently he put his arms around me. I put my face into his chest, and for a few minutes we pretended things were as they had been, before the war.

"My dearest boy," he whispered.

I pushed myself away from him. "Do your duty. Do it and go home."

I was taken to Fort Cornwallis, just a short walk away from the offices of Hutton & Sons. In the sort of twist so beloved of history, the Fort, once built to house the British garrison, was now used to imprison the remaining British soldiers and civilians who had not been sent to the Death Railway. The prisoners, thin to the bone, wearing only tattered clothes, watched from the depths of their cells as I was led into the darkness of the Fort.

I called out to my father, I called to the prisoners on either side of my cell, but they had not heard of Noel Hutton. It was only on the day they took me to face the Tribunal set up to hear my crimes that I saw him.

I was grieved by his appearance. He walked like an old man, with small, tentative steps, no longer sure of his path. But when he was placed next to me, he gave a shadow of his old smile and asked, "You did what had to be done?"

"Yes, Father. Did they hurt you?"

He shook his head. "They treated me with great civility. Largely, I think, due to Mr. Endo's intervention."

The Japanese never did things in half measures. Throughout my association with them I had seen the lengths they would go to just to prove their point. So it was with my punishment.

Hiroshi decreed that the evidence against me, which consisted mainly of Goro's testimony, was overwhelming. I had passed information to the enemy and I had played a part in the murder of Saotome, whose body had been thrown into the entrance of the Kempeitai headquarters in Ipoh even while I had been wandering around lost in the jungle. I was to be executed in the field outside the Fort. Noel Hutton was to be imprisoned for harboring me, for being the father of a traitor.

I steeled myself to receive the expected judgement with equanimity for my father's sake. When I turned to look at him he nodded once to himself and I saw in his face the same expression he always had whenever his commercial negotiations reached an impasse. During those negotiations he would often find a solution, but not now. There was none.

"I'll find a way to get you out," he said.

I wondered if his mind had been affected. His eyes were extraordinarily bright, shining with a certainty I felt was misplaced. He spoke to Endo-san. "You know the war is as good as over, yet still you persist in carrying out this travesty-this perversion."

"My duty continues right to the end of the war," Endo-san replied, before we were led out into the sun and taken back into the lightless world of the Fort.

Endo-san visited me daily. I asked to be allowed to see my father but I was refused. On the last evening of the day before I was to be executed, I knew the restraints I had bound over my emotions would soon break. I felt time draining away and there was nothing I could do to halt it.

Endo-san came later than usual that day. The lock rattled and the door was opened. I stood up from the wooden pallet that was my bed as Endo-san entered.

"Let me see him," I said.

"You will see him tomorrow," he said. "Do not worry about your father. He is well. I have been speaking to him these past few days. I have just come from his cell."

"What did he say? Did he have a message for me?"

Endo-san shook his head.

In spite of myself I had been hoping that my father could somehow put everything right again, as he had done when I was a child. But I was on my own now.

"Will you make sure he is safe? That no harm comes to him?" I asked.

"I will ensure that he has what he requires," Endo-san said.

"I do not want to see him tomorrow," I said. "I do not want him to be there. Can you at least see to that?"

"I will try," he said. "I have also requested the return of your sword to me."

"I never used it to kill," I said. I should have, I thought. I should have sliced Yong Kwan's throat. Perhaps then Kon would still be alive.

"That is good," Endo-san said.

"So it is ending the way it always has," I said. "In a way, you will be killing me again." I had to fight with all my strength not to collapse under my fears but he saw my struggle.

"Would you like me to stay here with you tonight?"

"Yes," I said. "I would."

Chapter Sixteen.

News travels fast in a small place like Penang. I remember how everyone used to be related, or connected, or knew each other. Somehow we always knew if a man was having an affair or if a woman loved her drink too much. Once I played truant and spent the day in the streets of Georgetown. When I returned home that evening my father was waiting for me. I had been seen and the news was passed to someone who then felt bound to let him know.

I was certain the Jipunakui had also helped in letting the people know of the fates of the last of the Huttons. On the day I was brought to the field outside Fort Cornwallis a crowd had already gathered, restless and eager. My father was there, and my heart sank. So Endo-san had failed me in spite of my pleas.

The crowd's reactions were mixed. Many perceived me as a traitor who had collaborated with the Japanese. These jeered and threw stones at me and were immediately dragged out by the Japanese soldiers and beaten. Once again, I thought, how could we ever understand these savage, cultured, brutal, yet refined people?

There were some in the crowd whom I had helped and they stood in silence. In the mass of faces I thought I saw Towkay Yeap's and I wished I could tell him about Kon, how he had longed to come home.

I shifted between times, seeing my mother as she lay dying beneath her sheets, seeing Aunt Mei smile at me as we sat in her house. I saw Endo-san the day he took me to his island but we rowed on and on and then he was gone, and I was left alone on my boat, the oars somehow in my hands. I closed my eyes and attempted to harness whatever strength remained in me.

When it was read out that I had passed information to the secret societies the jeers were silenced and, like the whisper of a breeze the crowd started chanting our family name. The sound swelled and filled the sky, strong as the monsoon winds. Goro fired a few shots into the air but the sullen silence that descended was even more powerful than the chanting.

The once immaculate padang where people had played cricket was littered with stones and bald patches of sand showed through the dry grass. In the middle of it was a square of blinding-white sand, perfectly raked. A wooden post had been planted in its center, jutting out like a desiccated tree trunk in the desert. I was made to kneel on the sand and Goro tied me to the post. I held my father's eyes in mine and whispered, "Forgive me. You shouldn't be here."

He shook his head gently. "You did what you had to do, what you could do."

"I'm so, so sorry." I felt the closeness of tears behind my eyes and I resolved not to let anyone see them.

Endo-san walked up to me. Time seemed to turn around again, for was he not in the very same clothes I had seen him wearing, when I was deep in zazen, as he prepared to cut me centuries ago? The black robes with the beautiful gold trimmings looked similar; only this time his hair was short, he did not have a top-knot, and in his hand he held his Nagamitsu sword.

He stood before me. It was true. It was happening, time was running backward. There on his face was the same expression I had seen then. I felt faint, yet there was no fear, only a recognition that he had been right all along. He said to me: "Your father will die. But you will live."

"No! That was not what I asked of you!"

He turned to look at my father. I saw them exchange glances and I knew that another agreement had been made, one that had excluded me. They brought my father next to me and he knelt heavily; I could even hear the popping of his joints. I pulled at my ropes and screamed at Endo-san.

"It's no use shouting. There's nothing you can do to change this," my father said softly. "Show some dignity before the people of Penang."