Garden of Evening Mists

by Tan Twan Eng

  “You’re lucky to have survived,” I said.

  “Where it comes to luck, you certainly beat everyone I know. The sole survivor of a slave-labor camp? Location of said camp unknown.” His eyes did not absorb any of the warmth from his smile. “I must tell you I found your RAAPWI report . . . intriguing, if rather brief.”

  For a second I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I remembered the report I had given to the military agency for the Recovery of All Allied Prisoners of War and Internees when I was in the hospital. “There wasn’t much for me to tell,” I said.

  From far in front I saw Magnus glancing at us. Aldrich waved at him to continue ahead to the factory without us. “Fantastic work you did with Kwai Hoon, by the way,” he said. “He assured us he wouldn’t have surrendered if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “He said he’d show you where Chin Peng was hiding.”

  “Unfortunately the camp was abandoned by the time our men got there. But we think he’s still somewhere in these parts,” he said. “Their top brass—people like Chin Peng—are using Cameron Highlands as their HQ, our informant tells us.”

  “Go and catch them, if you know they’re here.”

  Aldrich squinted into the valleys. “Have you any idea how many vacant bungalows, chalets, huts, and shacks are out there? We can’t search or watch every one of them. When we do get wind of a meeting, they always manage to flee into the jungles before we arrive.”

  I wondered why he was telling me all this. From the corner of my eye I saw that Magnus and the Templers had already gone inside the factory. The visit to Yugiri would be next.

  “This man—our informer,” Aldrich continued, “he mentioned something he had heard, that somebody in Majuba estate is helping the CTs—supplying food and money. Perhaps even information.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Our man doesn’t know.”

  “Any of the workers here could be helping them,” I said. “The guards can’t watch over them all the time. Magnus has been asking for more constables. No one’s responded to his requests.”

  “Magnus Johannes Pretorius has a reputation for turning the most unfavorable of circumstances to his advantage.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He wasn’t interned during the Occupation. And he kept Majuba out of the Japs’ hands.”

  “Aritomo interceded on his behalf.”

  “Nakamura Aritomo.” The thin smile flashed again. “Ah, of course. I’m surprised the War Crimes Tribunal didn’t investigate him.”

  “You think Magnus is helping the CTs?”

  “Well, he’s not exactly fond of the British, is he?”

  “He has his reasons.”

  “And the CTs never attacked Majuba.” Aldrich raised a forefinger. “Not once.”

  “Many of the farms here have not been attacked either,” I pointed out. “If the senior communists are using Camerons as their base, as you said, it wouldn’t make sense for them to attack us, would it? They wouldn’t want the attention.”

  “Some of the planters have been paying the CTs protection money to keep them off their land,” Aldrich said.

  “Those rumors have been floating around since the early days of the Emergency,” I said. “Why are you so interested in Magnus? Do you have evidence that he’s paying off the CTs?”

  “We’d like you to keep your eyes open for any unusual activity in the estate, tell us if you see or hear anything we should know about,” Aldrich said. “Keep us informed about what Magnus is up to.”

  “You want me to spy on him?”

  The smile on the chief inspector’s face remained unchanged. “You’re in a perfect position to help us, Miss Teoh. You’ve been living there for what, five months? Six? You’re part of the scenery now. Coming here to study under the Jap was so unusual, so eccentric, if I may say so. No one would suspect you of working for us.”

  I started to walk away from him, but he stopped me. “Special Branch is also interested in your Jap gardener. We’re quite curious as to what he’s doing up here. We don’t want to be forced to deport him, do we?”

  “On what grounds?” Despite telling myself not to be intimidated, I had to fight off the fear rising up inside me. The reams of laws under the Emergency Regulations gave the security forces nearly unlimited powers in matters relating to the insurgency.

  “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m sure we’ll manage to come up with something.”

  “Then I’ll wait for you to do just that.” I turned and strode toward the tea factory, leaving him to follow behind me.

  In the time I had spent in Yugiri, I had come to feel that the garden had in some way become mine. To show it to others who had not worked there seemed like a violation of something private I shared only with Aritomo. I was the last one to get out from the car when we arrived at the entrance to Yugiri. I had not expected to feel this reluctance to take them into the garden, and I almost hoped I would see Aritomo there, waiting to turn us back.

  “Well, let’s get a move on, shall we?” said Templer.

  I touched the wooden plaque on the wall, then pushed the door open. Everyone fell silent as they followed me into Yugiri.

  The light in here seemed softer, older, the air sharp with the tang of the yellowing bamboo leaves. The turns in the track disoriented not only our sense of direction, but also our memories, and within minutes I could almost imagine that we had forgotten the world from which we had just come.

  Lady Templer and Emily let out murmurs of amazement when we emerged from the path at the edge of the pond. Seeing the garden anew through the eyes of these people, I was reminded of Aritomo’s skill. The six narrow rocks rising from the water reminded me of fingers, reaching out to catch a magical sword flung far out into the water. For a moment I wondered why Aritomo had not followed the advice in Sakuteiki and limited the number of rocks to five, as he had done for the rock garden at the front of his house.

  “The pond is called Usugumo,” I said. “Wisps of Clouds.”

  “Odd name for a pond,” said the high commissioner.

  “Look at the water,” his wife said. The wind had died down, and the clouds on the water’s edge were like the reflections of faces peering into a well.

  “Clever,” said Templer.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you—what does ‘Yugiri’ mean?” said Lady Templer.

  “Evening Mists.”

  “A name even more obvious than Wisps of Clouds. I must say I expected something more obscure.”

  “Yugiri is a character from The Tale of Genji.” From the polite expression on her face I knew that she had no inkling of what I was talking about. “He was the firstborn son of Prince Genji.”

  “How interesting. And the pavilion? Does it have a name?”

  “Aritomo hasn’t decided on one.”

  The high commissioner pulled out a Leica from a bag carried by one of his assistants. “I’m afraid Mr. Nakamura has prohibited all photography in his garden,” I said. Shooting me a peeved look, Templer thrust the camera into the bag.

  Aritomo was waiting for us outside his house, dressed in a dark blue cotton robe and a pair of gray hakama. Except during the times when we were practicing archery, I had never seen him in traditional Japanese clothes.

  “So kind of you to let us see your garden, Aritomo,” Emily said, following closely behind me.

  He smiled at her. “You are always welcome here, Emily.”

  “You’ve made a lot of changes to the place,” Magnus said, coming up to us a moment later.

  Aritomo gave him and the Templers a bow. “Yun Ling has been a satisfactory guide, I hope.”

  “She’s been wonderful,” Lady Templer said, “so knowledgeable and enthusiastic.”

  “I have a demanding teacher,” I said, glancing at Aritomo.

  Lady Templer touched my arm. “The pavilion was charming. You really should give it a name, something special.”

  “The Pavilion of Heaven,” Aritomo said. I loo
ked at him, surprised. He nodded to me once.

  “How . . . oriental. But your house!” Lady Templer said, her eyes sweeping past Aritomo. “If I didn’t know better I would have sworn we were somewhere in Japan.”

  “So you’re Hirohito’s gardener?” said Templer.

  “That was a long time ago,” Aritomo replied.

  Aldrich introduced himself to Aritomo and added, “Some Japanese civilians are driving around the country on a pilgrimage, visiting places where their troops had fought our chaps.”

  Light seemed to hone Aritomo’s eyes. “Who are they?”

  “They call themselves the Association for the Recovery of Our Fallen Heroes, or something ridiculously grandiose like that,” Aldrich said. “They’ve requested police protection for their travels, but we’re too shorthanded to bother with them. Have they contacted you?”

  “I have not seen nor spoken to anyone from home since the war ended,” replied Aritomo.

  “You’ve never gone home?”

  “No.”

  The high commissioner had other farms in the highlands to visit and Lady Templer drew Aritomo and me to one side when they were leaving Yugiri. “Why don’t you design a garden for us, Mr. Nakamura?” She looked hopefully at him. “After what we saw this morning, the grounds at King’s House look terribly dull.”

  “At this point in my life, I am only interested in working on my own garden,” Aritomo replied, his angular and precise words fitting into the space between us, leaving no room for anyone to change his mind.

  “That’s disheartening to hear.” She frowned, then aimed a smile at me. “But there’s nothing to stop you from designing one for us, is there?”

  “When Aritomo feels I’m ready,” I replied, “your garden will be among the first I’ll work on.”

  “I’ll hold you to that promise, my dear girl,” she said. She turned to Aritomo. “You really should open your garden to the public. It’s a great shame, keeping something so beautiful to yourself.”

  I was watching Aritomo carefully. Sadness eclipsed his eyes. “Yugiri will always be a private garden.”

  Resting on the verandah of my bungalow, I wondered why Aldrich’s news about the Japanese traveling around the country had troubled Aritomo. I picked up my notebook and turned the pages, looking through the newspaper cuttings again, skimming over the masses of information I had scribbled down. The pale blue envelope fell out from between the pages onto the floor; I picked it up and looked at it.

  I had never told anyone my real reason for working in the War Crimes Tribunal, not even my father or my brother, Hock. I had been looking for information that would help me find my camp, and I had hoped that being a research assistant would give me an opportunity to speak to the Japanese war criminals being tried in Malaya. I had also found a Japanese woman to teach me more of the language.

  The normal rules of court procedure had not been strictly applied in the war crimes hearings. The tribunal gave weight to uncorroborated information, accepted circumstantial and hearsay evidence from the victims of the Japanese. I interviewed the Japanese officers and recorded their statements, but I also slipped my own questions in, asking them if they knew anything about my camp. I made sure that the cases I worked on were so well constructed that the war criminals would never get a reprieve. My tenacity impressed the prosecutors but my health deteriorated as I followed up on every piece of evidence I found and sat in on every interrogation session I could. I convinced, cajoled and threatened the reluctant victims to testify against the Japanese criminals. It was not possible to remain detached from my work, naturally. There were times I could not go on reading the documents when I remembered the fear and pain I had gone through. During those occasions, I had to push myself to continue, to sift through the information for that one thing I was looking for. But there was never a mention of the camp where Yun Hong and I had been imprisoned. When I left the tribunal to pursue my studies, I kept my notebook. A part of me still hoped that I might find the answer there.

  I visited Captain Hideyoshi Mamoru on the day he was to be hanged. He had been sentenced to death for the massacre of two hundred Chinese villagers at Teluk Intan, a fishing village on the west coast of Malaya. Surviving witnesses testified that he had ordered his men to march the villagers into the sea. When the water had come up to their waists, the soldiers had opened fire on them. The sea was so bloodied, a villager told me, that it took seven tides to wash the stains from the beaches.

  A Sikh guard brought me to Hideyoshi’s cell. The Japanese was curled up on a wooden pallet. He sat up when saw me come nearer to the metal bars. I waved the Sikh away.

  “You seem calm, unlike some of the others,” I said to Hideyoshi.

  “Do not be fooled, Miss Teoh,” he replied in fluent English—I recalled from his file that he had spent part of his military training in England. He was a slender man in his forties, made thinner by the deprivations of the war, like every one of us. “I am frightened, oh yes, very much. But I have had enough time to prepare myself. You want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “From the first day I saw you walking into the courtroom, I knew you would do your duty thoroughly. I knew I would be hung.”

  “Hanged,” I said. “Not hung.”

  “No difference to me,” he said. “You were in one of our camps, neh?”

  “I was in a Japanese camp.” They were the exact words I had used on the other men I had helped deliver to the hangman. By now I knew what Hideyoshi’s next question would be. Every one of the prisoners I had spoken to had invariably asked the same question when they discovered that I had been interned. Hideyoshi did not disappoint me.

  “So where were you sent?” he asked. “Changi? Java?”

  “It was in Malaya, somewhere in the jungle.”

  Hideyoshi got up from his pallet and shuffled to the bars. “The camp was hidden?” Though he reeked of stale perspiration I still took a step closer to him. “All the other prisoners were killed, yes?” he said. “How could it be that you are the only one who lived?”

  “You’ve heard of that camp?” I whispered.

  “Only rumors—how do the Malays describe them?”

  “Khabar angin.”

  “News scribbled on the wind.” He nodded. “I did hear of those camps, yes.”

  “Tell me more about them.” It was difficult to keep my voice steady.

  “What can you do for me in return?”

  “I can speak to someone higher up, perhaps get your case reviewed.”

  “And what reasons will you give?” Hideyoshi asked. “The evidence against me was brilliantly presented to the court. Brilliantly.”

  He was correct: it would appear highly suspicious if I were to intercede on his behalf. I looked around the passageway; I had to find out more about what he knew. I had to. It was the only scrap of information I had come across after all this time.

  “If I write a letter to my son,” he said, “will you post it to him for me? Intact. Not censored?”

  “If I’m satisfied that what you tell me is true.”

  “They were only rumors,” he repeated, as though worried that he had promised too much. I stared at him. “Kin No Yuri,” he said, and then translated it for me even though I understood what it meant. “Golden Lily.”

  “That tells me nothing,” I said, raising my voice. From the other end of the corridor the Sikh guard looked at me. I signaled that everything was fine.

  “It is the name given to the kind of place you were sent to,” Hideyoshi said. “You would know more about it than me if you had been taken there.”

  It was all he knew, I realized, all he could tell me. The sense of hope that had fired me up a short while before, the hope that someone else knew of the camp I had been sent to, disappeared. I backed away from the bars.

  “You are not going to keep to our agreement,” he said, “are you?”

  I spun around and walked away from him. I returned to his cell half an hour later. He opened
his eyes and looked up when I called his name. I passed him some writing materials between the bars and went to lean against a wall, watching him write. A short while later he came to the bars and handed me a letter sealed inside a light blue envelope. He looked at my hand, the hand with the missing fingers. “You should forget all that’s happened to you,” he said.

  The address on the envelope was written in English and Japanese. “How old is your son?”

  “Eleven. Eiji was three, almost four when I last saw him. He will not remember me.”

  I weighed the envelope on my palm. “I thought it would be heavier.”

  “How much paper do you need to tell your son you love him?” he replied.

  Staring at him, this man who had ordered an entire village to be killed, I felt a profound sadness for him, for us.

  When the guards came to take Hideyoshi, he asked me to walk with him. I hesitated, then I nodded. Walking along the passageway, we passed the other prisoners in their cells. A few of them stood to attention, saluting him from behind the bars. Hideyoshi kept his eyes straight ahead, his lips moving soundlessly.

  The sky was streaked with the carnage of sunset when we came out to the yard at the back of the prison. Hideyoshi stopped and turned his face upward, breathing in the light from the first stars of the evening. The guards pushed him up a flight of steps to the hanging platform and positioned him beneath the noose. They looped the rope around his neck and tightened it. He stumbled but regained his balance. One of the guards held up a blindfold. Hideyoshi shook his head.

  A Buddhist monk, appointed to conduct the rites for these executions, began to pray, thumbing the string of beads twined around his fingers as line after line of prayers unreeled from his throat. The droning washed over me. Hideyoshi and I looked at one another until the trapdoor cracked open and he dropped into an abyss only he could see.

  The siren announcing the end of the working day whined through the air, pulling me from the thicket of my memories. Returning the notebook to my room, I spent a few minutes looking at Yun Hong’s watercolor. I recognized the restlessness taking hold of me, a forewarning of the periods of despair that used to swamp me before I came to the highlands. I knew when these moods were imminent, when they would loom over the horizon of my mind.