Seldom do novels stumble more quickly, decisively overtaken by real-world events, than did The Reluctant Terrorist, In Search of the Jizo (2011, Proverse Hong Kong, 130 pages, HK$98) by Caleb Kavon. It's Mother Nature who gets the blame.
Contemporary Japan supplies a setting for much of this short book. Three days after the publisher's launch party, contemporary Japan dramatically changed, jolted by a huge earthquake and drenched by a towering tsunami that together killed tens of thousands of people, triggered a nuclear crisis and short-circuited the economy. Suddenly the previously valid version of Japan depicted in The Reluctant Terrorist no longer remotely resembles present-day reality.
The initially puzzling subtitle refers to celestial beings, the Jizo, believed to nurture dead babies. In fact, the plot focuses less on deceased infants than on dads who sacrifice their own lives, depriving their children. “He was raised almost in silence. He was surprised he could even talk. The loss of this father was so omnipresent in everything.”
Early on, a bomb rocks a Japanese restaurant in Hong Kong's populous Causeway Bay district. “There it was. Three blocks away. A very large explosion. He could hear it. Short and sweet. Loud and strong.”
A surprising photo, a clue at the bomb scene, shows the Kumano, a 1940s Japanese battleship. But the perplexing crime can't be too difficult to solve. Otherwise how could the novel begin and end within so few pages?
Naoyuki Sato, a Japanese financier who “reluctantly” planted the explosive, has a score to settle that predates his birth. It's tangled up in a sense of national shame for wartime atrocities. “Then he began to show us pictures smuggled back from China and Hong Kong. They were disgusting. Pictures of death and murder. He bragged and bragged while showing us pictures of beheaded Chinese, and British prisoners at the point of starvation. He said he loved the war....”
Memories of war crimes never go away. “Hong Kong and China had suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese. Try as they might, it was almost impossible for the Chinese to forget this.”
The Japanese father and son who own the bombed restaurant hold festering grudges too. “They looked angry and tough, not surprised, and emotionally shocked. He watched their eyes dart with hate at the Chinese around them.”
Although short, this isn't a simple book. Apparently its dimensions perplex the author too. “The Reluctant Terrorist is hard to describe because I have no idea where this book came from,” Kavon said. “I had never thought about anything like this before. The characters came alive from a place I do not know, and I remember working on it as if in a dream.”
The author struggles for realism. Some lines sound more like TV cartoons: “A bomb attack? We've never had a bomb attack. The last bomb that went off here in Hong Kong was in the fireworks for the New Year's Day Show. Are you sure?”
Sometimes stereotypes intrude too, as when Chinese military men appear: “They entered the conference room, leather shoes clapping the tile floor as in a military march.....”
Readers may despair because some sentences show a distressing clumsiness: “Johnny Graham continued his research as the morning turned from black to blue and grey on a cool Hong Kong morning.”
Painful past events force most of the characters to carry deep scars. One of the most troubled is Graham, a triad-friendly Hong Kong policeman who leads the bombing investigation.
In one of the book's best bits, Sato meets a circus performer who trains big cats and explains how to conquer fear. Here, the author approaches brilliance. “We are all so small, and life is so fierce. I simply must put away any fear, and let them know I just don't care about anything any more. They know there is no point in killing me. There is no great feast on my bones and no great victory in my destruction. Killing me would be an empty victory for them, and no matter how weak I am, they obey. It is my very weakness that gives me the courage to dominate them, and their very strength which is their own defeat.”
At other times, the author badly contradicts himself. First comes this: “Johnny Graham was nearly speechless. The road was blocked by ambulances. There were rows of ambulances and police vehicles. He saw a very small fire in front of a small Japanese Restaurant. He had not seen this kind of thing since his time in Beirut. Hong Kong ablaze. That was just damn impossible. In over 25 years on the force he had never seen this.”
A few pages later, the contradiction begins: “And this didn't look like anything special. A simple and stupid fertilizer bomb.... Nothing more than a damaged restaurant, sullen owners and a few minor injuries, no worse than the acid attack in Mongkok several months earlier.”
Raised in Hong Kong and the Philippines, Kavon lives in Chengdu, China. He's trilingual (English, Chinese, Spanish) and travels widely. His earlier book, The Monkey in Me: Confusion, Love and Hope Under a Chinese Sky, appeared in 2009.
Definitely, this author has a slick sense of history and its importance. “The history of nations is like the history of relationships between people. We all keep score. The British have an advantage over the Germans. The Germans have a score with the French. The Russians and Germans also have a history. The Poles have a history with the Germans and Russians. The Croats have a history with the Serbs. The French have a relationship with the Algerians. It goes on and on.”
Despite its rough edges, The Reluctant Terrorist delivers some good moments and shows flashes not just of a terrorist's bomb, but of genuine promise.
Approval rating: 53 per cent.
For more information: www.proversepublishing.com
(March 29, 2011)
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