The Garden of Evening Mists

by Tan Twan Eng

  ‘Why would you want to do this? Why did you change your mind?’

  ‘I need someone to help me.’

  The idea of being his apprentice, at his beck and call, did not appeal to me in the slightest. When I was recovering in the hospital after my imprisonment. I had vowed to myself that no one would ever control my life again.

  ‘For how long will you teach me?’ I asked.

  ‘Until the monsoon.’

  The rainy season, I calculated, would return in six or seven months’ time. I walked slowly around the room considering his proposal. I was unemployed, but I had saved enough money not to have to work for a while. And I had the time. Aritomo’s offer was the only way I could give my sister a Japanese garden. It was only for six months, I told myself. I had endured worse. I stopped moving and looked at him. ‘Until the monsoon.’

  ‘Taking on an apprentice, especially a woman, is not a small matter,’ he raised a warning finger. ‘The obligations imposed on me are heavy.’

  ‘I’m aware that it won’t be a weekend hobby.’

  Frowning, he went to a shelf and pulled out a book. ‘This will help you understand what I am doing.’

  The thin volume was bound in a grey cloth cover, its title printed in English beneath a line of Japanese calligraphy. ‘ Sakuteiki, ’ I said.

  ‘The oldest collection of writings on Japanese gardening. The original scrolls were written in the eleventh century.’

  ‘But garden designers didn’t exist at that time,’ I said. Aritomo’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Yun Hong told me,’ I added. ‘One of her gardening books mentioned it, I remember.’

  ‘She was right. Tachibana Toshitsuna, the man who compiledSakuteiki, was a member of the court nobility. He was said to be highly skilled with trees and plants.’

  ‘My Japanese isn’t good enough to read it.’

  ‘That copy in your hands is a version I translated into English and published years ago. It is yours. Now, to your lessons,’ he cut me short as I started to thank him. ‘In your first month, you will be working at the various sites of the garden still under renovation. We will start at half past seven. The work will end at half-past four, five, even later if we have to. You will have an hour’s rest for lunch at one o’clock. We work Mondays to Fridays. You will come in on weekends if I ask you to.’

  I had known that it would not be easy to convince him to design and create a garden for me. But now I realised that the hardest part was about to begin. All of a sudden I felt unsure of myself and of what I had agreed to.

  ‘The girl who had once walked in the gardens of Kyoto with her sister,’ Aritomo said, peering into my eyes as though searching for a pebble he had dropped into the bottom of a pond, ‘that girl, is she still there?’

  It was some time before I could speak. Even then my voice sounded small and dry to me.

  ‘So much has happened to her.’

  His gaze did not shift away from my eyes. ‘She is there,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Deep inside, she is still there.’

  Chapter Seven

  Sunrise was still an hour away, but I could feel it coming as I lay in my bed, feel the light curving around the earth. In the internment camp I had dreaded its arrival; it meant another day of unpredictable cruelties. As a prisoner, I had been afraid to open my eyes in the morning; now, when I was no longer in the camp, now when I was free, I was frightened of closing my eyes when I went to sleep at night, fearful of the dreams that were waiting for me.

  Reading Aritomo’s translation of Sakuteiki through the night, I remembered some of the fundamentals of Japanese gardening that Yun Hong had told me. Aritomo’s commentary on the origins of gardening in Japan made me realise that my knowledge of it was only the thin rakings of the topsoil.

  The practice of designing gardens had originated in the temples of China, where the work was done by monks. Gardens were created to approximate the idea of a paradise in the afterlife.

  Mount Sumeru, the centre of the Buddhist universe, was referred to more than once in Sakuteiki and I began to appreciate why so many of the gardens I had seen in Japan had a distinctive rock formation as their central feature. Mountains loomed large in the geographical and emotional landscapes of Japan and, over the centuries, their presence had permeated into its poetry, folklore and literature.

  Perhaps that was the reason Aritomo had come to the mountains here, I thought. Perhaps it was why he had made his home among the clouds.

  The earliest reference to designing gardens in Japan had been recorded in the Heian Period, about a thousand years ago, which had emphasised mono no aware, the sensitivity to the sublime, and was marked by an obsession with all aspects of Chinese culture. The gardens created in this period, none of which still existed, had been designed to replicate the extensive pleasure gardens of the Chinese aristocrats living across the Sea of Japan. They had been built around lakes to facilitate boating activities, literary parties and poetry competitions, occasions when songs were sung and words were floated on water.

  In time, the influence of China was eroded by the aesthetics of the subsequent Muromachi, Momoyama and Edo eras, when Japanese gardeners established their own principles of composition and construction. The designs of gardens in Japan were no longer influenced by the fashions of the antique continent across the sea, but by the landscapes of Japan’s own countryside. The growth of Zen Buddhism steered the move towards a stricter asceticism, the excesses of the previous eras raked away as monks reflected on their faith by creating less cluttered gardens, paring down their designs almost to the point of emptiness.

  I put the book down and closed my eyes. Emptiness: it appealed to me, the possibility of ridding myself of everything I had seen and heard and lived through.

  Earlier that evening before going to bed, I had informed Magnus that I would not be leaving Cameron Highlands. He was delighted, but his lips pressed together when I told him that I was looking to lease a bungalow in the area. ‘You can’t live alone,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not safe, Yun Ling,’ Emily said from her armchair on the other side of the living room, looking up from the novel she was reading.

  ‘The hills are crawling with CTs,’ Magnus said, his voice rising. ‘Look what they did to those young Semai!’

  ‘I lived on my own in KL,’ I said. As a prisoner, I had been surrounded by hundreds of people; now, I protected my privacy. ‘And anyway,’ I pointed out, ‘Frederik has his own bungalow.’

  ‘He’s a man, Yun Ling, and a soldier,’ Magnus said. ‘And he’s living inside the estate.

  Look, I’ve already told you – you’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like.’

  ‘It’s not fair to impose on you.’

  He glanced at Emily before turning to me again. His chest rose and fell as he took in a long breath and let it out. ‘We’ve got a few vacant bungalows in the estate. My assistant managers used to stay there. I’ll speak to Harper, see which bungalow’s suitable for you.’

  ‘I’m not fussy, but it has to be near to Yugiri. And I insist on paying you rent.’

  ‘In return,’ Emily said, ‘you must have dinner with us – once a week, at the very least. I don’t want you to hide yourself away.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Magnus said. ‘And another thing: I’ll get a worker to escort you to Yugiri every morning. And he’ll walk you home when you’ve finished in the evening.’

  ‘Pour me a glass of wine and we’ll drink to that.’ I was glad of his offer of the guard. I had been worried about having to walk to Yugiri in the half-light of dawn.

  While he uncorked a bottle of wine, I went around the living room, admiring the fever trees in the Pierneef lithographs. At the end of the row was a woodblock print of a leaf. Peering at it, I discovered Majuba House concealed in the lines of the leaf.

  ‘That’s Aritomo’s,’ Magnus said.

  Next to it was a box frame with a medal inside, the colours of its ribbon almost similar to those of the flag flying on the roof. ‘What
does “Oorlog” mean?’ I said, reading from the medal.

  He corrected my pronunciation and said, ‘It means war.’

  I pointed to a sepia photograph of an old man wearing a top hat, his cheeks lathered in a thick white beard. ‘Your father?’ I said.

  Magnus handed me a glass of wine. ‘Him? Ag, nee, that’s Paul Kruger, the president of the Transvaal Republic during the Second Boer War,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you heard of the Kruger Millions? No? Well, when the English occupied Pretoria they discovered that two million pounds worth of gold and silver were missing from the Transvaal mint. A lot of money fifty years ago – think what it would be worth now!’

  ‘Who had taken it?’

  ‘There are people who believe that Oom Paul had buried the gold and silver somewhere in the Lowveld, in the last days of the war.’

  ‘Like what the Japs are said to have done?’

  He laughed, glancing at Emily. ‘ Lao Puo, you’ve been complaining to this young lady about my weekend fun? Well, what the Japs in Tanah Rata buried is probably peanuts, compared to the Kruger Millions.’

  ‘They can’t be worth more than Yamashita’s gold,’ I said. ‘Have you heard of it?’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it, there are always stories like this, whenever there’s been a war,’ I said.

  ‘Has anyone found the gold Kruger buried?’

  ‘They’ve been searching for fifty years,’ Magnus said, ‘but no one ever has.’ At the low rumble of thunder he glanced up to the ceiling.

  There was another photograph further along the wall. ‘That’s my brother Piet –

  Frederik’s pa. Taken shortly before he died,’ Magnus said, coming to stand beside me. ‘I asked Frederik to bring it with him when he came here. It’s the only photograph I have of any of my family.’

  ‘Frederik looks a lot like his father.’

  Emily put down her novel to look at Magnus.

  ‘We lost everything – my Oupa’s diaries, my Ouma’s recipe books, my stinkwood animal carvings,’ Magnus said. ‘Photographs of my parents and my sister. Everything.’

  ‘Do you still... ’ I stalled, then tried again, ‘Can you remember their faces?’

  He looked at me for a long moment. In his eye I knew he understood my own fears. ‘I couldn’t for a long time,’ he said. ‘But in the last few years... well, they’ve come back to me again. As you get older, you start remembering the old things.’

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ Emily said.

  She stood up and held out her hand to Magnus and together they went out to the verandah that looked onto the back garden. A gust of wind, moistened with rain from over the mountains swirled into the sitting room, lifting the curtains. After a moment’s hesitation I went out as well, standing apart from them.

  ‘ Nou lê die aarde nagtelang en week in die donker stil genade van die rëën,’ Magnus said softly, putting his arm around Emily’s waist and pulling her to him.

  For some reason the sounds of those words shifted something in me. ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Now lies the earth night-long and washed in the dark silent grace of the rain,’ Emily said. ‘It’s from his favourite poem.’ She turned away from me and leaned closer against Magnus.

  Lightning convulsed over the mountains. The rain rushed in a minute later, blurring the night.

  * * *

  Just before six o’clock I switched on the bedside lamp and got dressed in an old yellow blouse and a pair of shorts that came to my knees. I pulled on a pair of old cotton gloves I had obtained from Emily. The servants were lighting the stoves in the kitchen when I went in. I ate two slices of bread and drank a cup of milk. I heard Magnus coughing and clearing his throat in his bathroom as I opened the front door and left Majuba House. The estate’s siren started up, but was soon filtered by the distance and the trees.

  Daylight was nibbling the margins of the sky when I arrived at Yugiri. I was a few minutes early so I went around to the back. Ah Cheong was leaning his bicycle against a wall.

  He nodded when I greeted him. Aritomo was at the archery range. I stood at the side and watched him. He finished his practice and told me to wait at the front of the house. When he came out again he had changed into a blue shirt and a pair of khaki trousers. He pointed to my writing pad. ‘I do not want you to make notes,’ he said, ‘not even when you go home at the end of the day.’

  ‘But I won’t be able to remember everything.’

  ‘The garden will remember it for you.’

  I left the writing pad in the house and followed him into the garden, paying close attention as he listed out the work for the day.

  The earliest gardeners in Japan had been monks, recreating the dream of heaven on earth in the monastery grounds. From the introduction to Sakuteiki, I knew that Aritomo’s family had been niwashi, gardeners, to the rulers of Japan since the sixteenth century, each eldest son carrying on from where his father had left off. There was a legend that the first Nakamura had been a Chinese monk in the Sung dynasty who had been banished from China. The monk had crossed the ocean to Japan, hoping to spread the teachings of the Buddha. But instead he had fallen in love with the daughter of a court official and had abandoned his vows, remaining in Japan for the rest of his life. Looking at Aritomo from the corner of my eye, I could almost believe that tale. There were aspects of a monk in his bearing, in the calm but single-minded focus of his approach, and in the slow and considered way he spoke.

  ‘Pay attention.’ Aritomo snapped his fingers in my face. ‘What kind of garden am I making here?’

  Thinking back to the parts of the garden I had seen, the winding walks and the different views, I made a swift guess. ‘A strolling garden. No, wait – a combination of a strolling and a viewing garden.’

  ‘From which era?’

  This completely stumped me. ‘I can’t pick out a particular one,’ I admitted. ‘It’s not Muramachi; it’s not entirely Momoyama or Edo.’

  ‘Quite so. When I designed Yugiri, I wanted to combine elements from the different periods.’

  I skirted a puddle of rainwater. ‘It must have made it more difficult to achieve an overall harmony in your garden.’

  ‘Not all my ideas were workable. It is one of the reasons why I am making these changes.’

  Walking in the garden I had heard about almost half a lifetime ago, I wished Yun Hong were here with me. She would have enjoyed it more than me. I wondered what I was doing here, living the life that should have been my sister’s.

  At each turn in the path, Aritomo drew my attention to an arrangement of rocks, an unusual sculpture, or a stone lantern. They looked as if they had been lying there on the beds of moss and ferns for centuries. ‘These objects signal to the traveller that he is entering another layer of his journey,’ he said. ‘They tell him to stop and gather his thoughts, to savour the view.’

  ‘Has any woman ever been taught to be a gardener?’

  ‘None. That does not mean it is not permitted,’ he replied. ‘But physical strength is required to create a garden. A woman would not be able to last long as a gardener.’

  ‘What do you think the guards made us do?’ I said in a burst of anger. ‘They forced us to dig tunnels, the men and women. The men broke rocks and we dumped them in a gorge miles away.’ I took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. ‘Yun Hong told me once that what’s required in creating a garden is mental, not physical strength.’

  ‘You obviously have both in abundance,’ he said.

  The anger roiled up in me again, but before I could reply the sound of voices and laughter came to us. ‘The workers are here,’ Aritomo said. ‘Late, as usual.’

  The men were barefoot, dressed in patched singlets and shorts, towels slung over their shoulders. Aritomo introduced them to me. Kannadasan, the one who could speak some English, was the leader. The other four knew only Tamil and Malay. White teeth flashed against dark skin when they heard that I would be joining them.

/>   We followed Aritomo to the area behind the tool shed. Stones had been set down here, their dimensions varying from the size of coconuts to slabs that came up to my shoulders. ‘I found them around the caves near Ipoh during the Occupation,’ Aritomo said.

  ‘You were already planning to make changes to the garden then?’ I asked.

  ‘I had to have a good reason to keep the workers here,’ he said. ‘So I travelled around, searching for materials I could use.’

  ‘Then you would have seen and heard what the Kempeitai were doing to people.’

  He looked at me, then turned and walked away, wedging a painful silence into the space between us. Sensing the palpable tension in the air, the workers averted their eyes from me.

  Looking at Aritomo’s retreating figure, I realised that, however difficult it was for me, I had to put aside my prejudices if I wanted to learn from him.

  I broke into a trot and caught up with him. ‘These rocks you found – all have unusual markings,’ I said.

  For a long moment he did not reply. Finally, he said, ‘Garden designing is known as The Art of Setting Stones, which tells you how important they are.’

  I was filled with relief, although I did not let him see it. We walked back to the rocks and he examined them, rubbing them with his hands. The larger ones were five to six feet high, narrow and sharp-edged, their surfaces covered in striations. Weeds crawled up their sides, as if trying to pull them back into the cool, damp earth.

  ‘Every stone has its own personality, its own needs.’ He selected five of them, touching them one after another. ‘Move these to the front.’

  My breathing constricted. His orders brought me back to the time when I had been a slave for the Japanese army. My resolve started fraying, even as I sensed his curious gaze on me.

  I looked around and remembered how, in the camp, I had forced myself to take the first steps in saving my life. That journey had not ended, I realised.