by Tan Twan Eng
‘A man about to be shot will say anything.’
‘Yes, we both know that’s true, don’t we?’ he said. ‘Well, anyway, the rumours of the loot have been floating around for years. Central Committee even organised a team to find it.’
‘What did you do to that Japanese, your friend?’
‘What I’ve always done,’ he said. ‘I obeyed my orders.’
* * *
Aritomo did not enquire about my lateness in coming to Yugiri, and I did not make any excuse for it. Planting a bed of ground cover later that afternoon, I stood up abruptly and turned to look at him. He was standing completely still, staring at the mountains around Gunung Plata. On the wind, the faintest cracklings of gunfire came to us, followed a few seconds later by the thumps of mortar shelling. We looked at each other and, after a minute or two, returned to our work.
* * *
All children are expected to travel from the farthest corners of the world for a reunion dinner with their parents on the eve of Chinese New Year. To ignore it is to be deemed unfilial, the worst crime a person can be accused of. One can be an embezzler or a murderer, but if one were judged to be filial to one’s parents, society – at least the society I was brought up in – will find it easier to forgive you. Emily made disapproving noises when I told her that I would be staying in the highlands for the entire fourteen-day duration of the lunar New Year. ‘Then you must eat with us that night. And bring Aritomo,’ she added. ‘Frederik’s coming as well.’
Majuba House was decked out in red: red banners, red paper lanterns and red squares of paper with the Chinese character Fook in black calligraphy to entice more wealth into the home.
Branches of furry-budded cherry blossom in porcelain vases decorated the hallway. Emily’s parents had passed away years ago and, being an only child herself, there were only the five of us for the dinner. The servants had returned to their villages and the house was quiet. Emily had spent the past month preparing the food – a typical mixture of Chinese, Malay and Indian dishes: roast pork in a thick soy-sauce glaze, beef rendang, fish-head curry, crabs caught off Pangkor Island simmered in a coconut curry sauce, chicken curry fragrant with crushed stalks of lemongrass taken from her vegetable garden. Magnus served us wines from his cellar. ‘From the Groot Constantia vineyards,’ he said, holding up a bottle. ‘They supplied Napoleon with these when he was banished to St. Helena.’
Aritomo took a sip, held it on his tongue and then swallowed. ‘A wine made for exiles.’
‘Like it? I’ll give you a bottle to take home,’ said Magnus.
‘Lao Tzu should have taken some with him,’ I whispered to Aritomo. He smiled, and I was aware of Frederik studying us from the other side of the table.
There was just too much to eat, but we finished all of it anyway, Aritomo helping himself again and again to the fish-head curry. I preferred the beef rendang, its coconut curry sauce simmered until it was almost dry. At the end of the meal Emily pushed her plate aside and announced, ‘We’ve arranged some yen-hua.’
‘What’s that?’ Frederik asked.
‘Smoke flowers,’ she said, looking at the clock. ‘Come – let’s go outside.’
The estate workers and their families were already gathering on the lawn behind the house. The fireworks started a few minutes later. Yellow and red and white dandelions lit up the sky, pinned there for a few seconds before dribbling away, only to be followed by a blue agapanthus blooming here, a red starfish flaring there. I thought of ‘the People Inside’, sitting in their camps and looking through the net of leaves at the smoke flowers illuminating the night sky. I wondered if my father was eating his dinner at that moment with my mother and brother. I wondered if my mother was well enough to come out from the bedroom where she had been spending her days since the war ended. My family’s last reunion dinner had been ten years before. My sister had still been alive then.
‘Can I come and see you later?’ Frederik whispered to me. I gave him a nod.
‘That should scare away the evil spirits for another year,’ Emily said, as the last spittle of fire died away from the night sky.
Chapter Thirteen
Ah Cheong closed up three of the six rooms in the house after his wife’s death and had the furniture taken to the storeroom. Only the study, the sitting room and the bedroom are cleaned and aired weekly. The housekeeper follows me around as I open up the rooms, searching for a suitable work space for Tatsuji. The rice-paper screens and the sliding doors have been ravaged by moths and sickened with mould. Cobwebs muffle the rafters, the husks of consumed insects hanging in them like tiny, primitive bells. My bare feet awaken the dust from the disintegrating tatami mats. In the largest of the three empty rooms, a leak has rotted the roof, staining the walls and the floor. Aritomo’s will had provided for sufficient money to maintain his house and the garden, but for the last eleven, twelve years I have had to make up for the ever-increasing shortfall, paying Ah Cheong’s and the garden workers’ salaries and for any repairs that had to be done. Not once have I ever considered selling the property.
In the end, I decide there is only one room that is still in an acceptable state for Tatsuji. It is situated next to the study at the end of a short corridor, its doors opening out to the courtyard garden.
‘Get someone in to clean up the room. I don’t want you doing it yourself,’ I instruct Ah Cheong. ‘And while we’re at it, we might as well have the other rooms spruced up.’
He leaves to make the arrangements. I gaze at the rock garden in the courtyard. The rocks are completely smothered by moss. Birds nesting in the eaves have streaked the whitewashed walls with their droppings.
Later that day, two of Ah Cheong’s female cousins arrive from Tanah Rata to dust and scrub and wipe. In the storeroom I come across a rosewood table and a pair of matching chairs tangled among a puzzle of furniture. I have Frederik’s workers carry them to the workroom, and a shop in Tanah Rata delivers a desk lamp I ordered. By late afternoon the room is cleaned and readied for Tatsuji, and I instruct one of the workers to leave a message for him at the Smokehouse Hotel.
I walk around outside the house, making a note of what needs to be repaired or replaced.
The long stretch of gravel separating the archery hall from the target bank is covered in weeds and lallang. I am about to take the three steps up into the hall when I remember to take off my shoes. I pull the blinds all the way up. The cedar wood floors, like those in the unused rooms, are also covered in a layer of dust. I stand there, my thoughts disarrayed like arrows scattered from a fallen quiver. Then I see Aritomo’s bow, still resting on the stand, its string broken. I wipe the dust off with my palm. Next to it is my own bow. I take it up. The string is slack, and I unknot it. The bow is unyielding, releasing spores of dust into the air when I force it into a curve to restring it. It takes a few attempts to remember the method of knotting the string to both ends of the weapon. Eventually it is done, although Aritomo would have laughed if he saw it. The string is no longer as taut as it ought to be. I rummage in the cupboard at the back of the hall for a paper target, but find none. Returning to the front of the hall, I stand in the shooting position and make an effort to remove all thoughts from my mind. The most fundamental thing Aritomo taught me returns. I begin to regulate my breathing, pulling each breath deep into my body to centre myself.
It is a struggle, as though my lungs have shrivelled like aged wineskins and no longer have the capacity to fill out the way they once could.
When I feel I am ready, I aim the arrow and draw back the bowstring. My shoulders resist, protesting at the strain. I release the arrow before my mind is still. It falls on the weed-covered gravel, halfway between the shajo and the target bank.
Birdsong sparkles the air; mists topple over the mountains and slide down their flanks, slow and soundless as an avalanche witnessed from miles away. Instinctively I turn to look behind me, expecting Aritomo to chide me with a look or a scathing word. I see only my own footprints on the dust
y floorboards as the bamboo blinds creak softly in the wind.
* * *
The gardener who works for Frederik has agreed to see me in Yugiri. I wait for her outside the house at half past seven the next morning. ‘You’re late,’ I say when Ah Cheong brings her to me.
‘Only fifteen minutes- lah.’ Vimalya Chin is a Chinese-Indian in her early thirties, dressed in a short-sleeved checked shirt and a pair of khaki shorts that expose her hard brown calves.
I remind myself I am no longer in my courtroom, but I find some comfort in old habits.
‘I don’t want dogs in my garden,’ I point to her mongrel sniffing at the irises. Giving me an annoyed look, Vimalya calls the dog to her with kissing sounds and leashes it to a tree. I look away when she lets the dog lick her mouth. Disgusting.
‘So, what is it that you want me to do?’ She looks around as we start our walk through the garden. ‘With all these exotics, it’ll take a lot of work to turn the place into an indigenous garden.’
‘I have no intention of doing that! Frederik didn’t tell you why I wanted to see you?’
The gardener shakes her head.
‘Have you been here before?’ I ask.
‘Once, when Mr Frederik wanted me to work in his gardens. He brought me in here, just for a look.’
‘He probably wanted you to see what his gardens should not look like.’
‘What is it that you want me to do here?’ she asks again, her hand jiggling the keys in her pocket.
‘Will you stop that?’ She pulls her hand out of her pocket. ‘I want you to restore it to what it used to be,’ I say.
She glances at me. ‘I’m not an expert in Japanese gardens.’
‘I am.’
‘Then you don’t need me.’
‘I require someone to carry out my instructions, to supervise the workers.’
‘Do you have the original plans for this place?’
‘They’re all inside here,’ I touch my temple. ‘All here.’ Seeing that she is uncertain, I say, ‘Come along, I’ll give you an idea of what needs to be done. You can decide if you want the job or not.’ I will have to uproot my memories from the soil I have buried them in. But isn’t that what I have been doing for the past week? ‘Those hedges on the shore on the other side... you see them?’ I ask when we come to the pond. ‘They have to be trimmed, every layer defined clearly – they have to look like waves surging onto a beach. And thin the lotus pads. Let the water breathe.’
The air grows colder as we go deeper into the garden and I point out to Vimalya the things I want done. We stop for a while at the stone basin; its sides are completely furred with moss. I remember the morning I bent over it and peered through the gap in the bushes at the mountain. The view is obstructed by branches growing over the hole. The mountain is no longer visible, and for a moment I wonder if it is still there.
‘Cut these branches away.’ I show her how large the gap has to be. ‘And scrub the basin.’
‘Japanese gardens are supposed to have a theme, aren’t they?’ Vimalya asks.
I nod. ‘A gardener will evoke memories of a famous view, or create certain feelings: solitude, tranquillity or a mood of reflection.’
‘Well, I don’t see a single, unifying theme here. It feels odd to me. Yet it’s somehow also familiar,’ she says. ‘It’s as if I know the various scenes that are being recreated but I can’t identify them.’
Only a handful of visitors has ever remarked upon this aspect of Aritomo’s garden. ‘So,’
I say, ‘are you interested in helping an old woman fix up her garden?’
‘My grandfather used to work here – Kannadasan’
‘We worked together.’
‘He used to talk about you when I was a little girl. I had forgotten all about it until Mister Frederik mentioned you.’ She grinned. ‘It made me curious to see you.’
‘Bring him along the next time you come.’
‘He died a few years ago,’ she said. ‘He often mentioned the Japanese gardener – how he had saved him from being taken to work on the Burma Railway.’ Her shoulders lifted and dropped as she let out a sigh. ‘All right. Look, I’ll help you fix up the garden. It’ll be something to tell my children one day. But I can’t be here all the time.’
‘You only have to make sure your men follow my instructions,’ I say. ‘I’ll make a list of the things to be done. Can you start as soon as possible?’
‘How long are you staying here?’
‘I don’t know. Not very long.’
When we return to the pond half an hour later she stops and looks around her. ‘From what you’ve been telling me, it’s just about aesthetics, isn’t it? The garden I mean?’
‘Of course not. The garden has to reach inside you. It should change your heart, sadden it, uplift it. It has to make you appreciate the impermanence of everything in life,’ I say. ‘That point in time just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is about to fall; that moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful about life. Mono no aware, the Japanese call it.’
‘That’s a morbid way of looking at life.’
‘We’re all dying,’ I say. ‘Day by day; second by second. Every breath that we take drains the limited reserves we are all born with.’ I can see that she is not interested in the subject of death, believing, like so many young people, that it has no relevance to her.
‘I can start tomorrow,’ she says. ‘I have to go – I have another garden to look at.’
‘I’m sure you can find your way out. And don’t forget your dog.’
I stand at the edge of the pond and gaze at it after she has left. In my head I hear Aritomo’s voice again. Do everything correctly and the garden will remember it for you. Over the years I have sometimes wondered why he never wanted his instructions set down on paper, why he was so fearful that his ideas would be stolen and replicated. After staying away from Yugiri for so long, I am now starting to understand, to truly understand, what he meant. The lessons are embedded in every tree and shrub, in every view I look at. He was right – I have committed everything he taught me to my memory. But the reservoir has begun to crack. Unless I write them all down, who will be able to decipher his instructions when I am no longer able to make anyone understand them, when I myself can no longer understand what I’m saying?
* * *
Tatsuji comes to work on the ukiyo-e at nine in the mornings, staying on until an hour or two after lunch. I instruct Ah Cheong to give him tea and snacks at mid-morning. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of the historian strolling in the sections of the garden near the house – he knows better than to stray any further without my permission. There is always an attentive look on his face, even when he is merely sitting on a bench. From the window in the study I often see him reading from a slim and old hardback book, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, sitting so still that he seems to have become another stone in the garden.
I spend the mornings writing down the instructions for Vimalya, making them as detailed as possible. News of my return to Yugiri has gone out, and I have been receiving notes and letters from people I have never heard of, requesting permission to visit the garden. Invitations to talk about Aritomo and his garden arrive from the Cameron Highlands Tourism Office, the Rotary Club, the Highlands Hikers’ Association, the Expats’ Club, the Tanah Rata Gardening Society. I spend the morning sorting them and throwing them away. That is when it happens. As before, there is no warning.
Unfolding a letter from an envelope, I gradually become aware that the paper in my hand is filled with unrecognisable scribbles. The world becomes so quiet that I seem to be able to hear the flow of my bloodstream. After a while – perhaps no longer than a minute or two – I pick up another sheet of paper. My hands are trembling. The writing on it is also illegible. Lifting my gaze to a pile of books on the desk, I find the titles on their spines to be indecipherable. I reach for a writing pad and write something on it, but my hand is shaking too much. I
breathe in and out a few times until I feel I am ready, and then I print out my name slowly. Even though my hand’s memory tells me I am writing it correctly, what appears on the paper is a line of hieroglyphs.
A surge of panic sends me out of the study. The passageways confuse me; I feel I am trapped in a maze. Tatsuji calls out to me as I rush past him. Hearing the faint sound of knocking, I follow it to the back of the house. Ah Cheong is cutting vegetables in the kitchen, his cleaver beating out a rhythm on the thick chopping board. He looks up, startled by my appearance. He puts down his cleaver, wipes his hands on a towel and brings me a glass of water. Tatsuji has followed me into the kitchen and is staring at me. I take the glass from Ah Cheong, relieved to see that the trembling in my hand is less obvious now. I drink the water slowly, and when I finish I realise I am still holding something in my hand. I open my fingers to find a wrinkled piece of paper. Smoothing it out, I see my name, looking just a bit wobbly and uncertain, but recognisable.
I fold up the paper and instruct Ah Cheong to put up a sign at the entrance to discourage those who show up hoping to be allowed in. But I know that they will still come.
* * *
The Smokehouse Hotel appears not to have changed much in the last forty years. The purple bougainvillaea is still there, larger now, flowering up the mock-Tudor walls all the way to the roof. The prints of fox-hunting scenes still hang inside. The lobby is busy with tourists. As is my habit, I am early. A waiter shows me to a table on the rose garden terrace. Elderly Europeans sit in the sun, enjoying their tea and scones. The air is powdered with the fragrance of roses.
