The Gift of Rain

by Tan Twan Eng

I was born with the gift of rain,

She was still beautiful, her clothes simple in the way only the very expensive can be,

I remember the day still, from across the distance of the fleeting years.

‘Taken at the last party we ever had,’ I said. ‘Before the war wrecked everything.’

I have always felt a greater affinity with the sea at night.

Where will you go?” I asked him. ‘“I do not know yet. I wish to see the world, and find my answers,” he replied.

Memories – they are all the aged have. The young have hopes and dreams, while the old hold the remains of them in their hands and wonder what has happened to their lives.

Stillness in Movement, Movement in Stillness.

The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future.

Even though half of me is English I have never hungered for England. England is a foreign land, cold and gloomy.

A woman who was not afraid to show her teeth, whether in joy or in fury.

I felt a warm glow all over me, and was surprised to discover that the feeling was one of contentment.

And so, for the first and last time, I gently unfolded my life, exposing what was written, letting the ancient ink be read once again.

We grew up speaking the local languages, as he had himself. It would bind us to Penang forever.

And halfway across the world, countries that seemed to have little to do with us were preparing to go to war.

‘The sea can break one’s heart, neh?’

‘I can only teach you the way, that is all. What you do with it and what it does to you, those are beyond my influence.’

Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.

‘You were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember – the rain also brings the flood.’

But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such.

“You the butterfly – I, Chuang Tzu’s dreaming heart”,’

‘Does the philosopher dream of the butterfly, or is he merely the butterfly’s dream?’

“Woe to you, O Land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning!”

It was too pleasurable a Friday evening to be spent at a party.

Here was a man courageous enough to go off to war, yet who was still afraid of his father.

Something in his voice made me aware that he was beginning to see the signs, that the war would come to Malaya, that all the old ways would be washed away forever.