The Garden of Evening Mists (17 page)

‘Cunning,’ he says, ‘the way he has done it, playing with perspective. I should have seen it immediately.’

‘
Shakkei
,’ I say.

‘He taught you that?’

‘It was in everything he taught me.’

‘The old palace gardeners I spoke to all mentioned Aritomo-sensei’s talent for borrowed scenery. It was his strongest skill, but it was never given the recognition it deserved.’

‘Perhaps it’s because he did it so well that people weren’t aware of it,’ I reply. ‘How often does one notice the clouds above us, the mountains over the fence?’

Tatsuji considers my words for a moment. He tidies the desk and packs his gloves and magnifying glass into his satchel.

‘I’ll have a room prepared for you to work in, probably in a day or two,’ I say. ‘You’re not pressed for time?’

‘Well... I would like to finish the book as quickly as possible.’ He buckles his satchel and looks up at me. ‘This will be the last book I will ever write. I am retiring after this.’

‘I can’t see you spending your days on a golf course.’

‘I have a promise to keep, a promise I made many years ago.’

Struck by the sorrow in his voice, I am about to ask him more about it, but he takes his satchel, bows to me, and leaves the room. At the door he turns to me and bows again.

Leaning on the windowsill, I stare at the mountains.
Shakkei
. Aritomo never could resist employing the principles of borrowed scenery in everything he did, and the thought comes to me that perhaps he may have even brought it into his life. And if he had done so, had there come a time when he could no longer distinguish what was real and what were only reflections in his life? And will this also happen to me in the end?

* * *

Before strolling to Majuba that evening, I decide to sweep the fallen leaves from the
kore-sansui
garden below the front verandah. The five stones I helped set into the earth have been worn smoother now, and the lines on the bed of gravel have been rubbed away. I stand there at the edge, trying to remember the last time I saw it, the pattern Aritomo had raked into them. He had his favourites: the contour lines of a map, the memory rings of a tree, the ripples on a lake. After a moment or two I comb out a series of lines, the gravel crackling softly beneath my rake. By the time I have finished shadows are flooding the furrows between the lines, like water from a rising tide.

* * *

Branches and wild grass have narrowed the trail I so often used when I was apprenticed to Aritomo, obstructing the way in a few places. I spend some time clearing them, perspiring and growing ever more annoyed. The earliest stars are just appearing when I cross over into the tea estate. I had forgotten that night comes quickly to the mountains.

In the last year I have heard the odd story or two about Frederik from people who spent their holidays in Cameron Highlands. Frederik had made Majuba Tea Estate his home even before Magnus’s death and, except for occasional visits to England and South Africa, he has lived in Cameron Highlands since he came here in the Fifties. He occupied one of the bungalows in Majuba when he took over the running of the estate. On her seventieth birthday Emily persuaded him to move into Majuba House. Over the years, I heard about various women with whom he was involved, but he never married. Given his mania for indigenous gardening, I wonder if his quest to restore everything to what he considers to be endemic to the highlands has extended to the Cape Dutch house his uncle had built and of which had been so proud. I hope not.

The aged eucalyptuses lining the driveway have not been taken out, and their bark peelings cover the ground. I bend to pick one up – it feels like old vellum, cracked and dried up.

Coming to the end of the driveway, I stop to look at Majuba House. The lights from inside spray a golden nimbus around it, reflecting in the pond. I am glad to see Frederik has kept it the way it was when Magnus was still alive, even if the Transvaal flag is no longer flying. A green pennant with the Majuba Tea Estate logo, an outline of a Cape Dutch house, flaps gently from the flagpole.

The strelitzias along the walls have been replaced with red hibiscus.
So common
, I think as I walk up to the front door. A maid takes me along the corridors to the living room. The house has been kept the way it was, and I wonder if it is out of respect for Emily. The bronze sculpture of the leopard remains on the sideboard: the predator forever chasing its prey.

The furniture in the living room is the same yellow wood pieces Magnus brought over from the Cape, although the upholstery has been re-covered in blue and white stripes. The Bechstein piano stands in one corner. The Thomas Baines paintings and the Pierneef lithographs have not been replaced; I almost expect the roots of the fever trees to have cracked the frames and dug themselves into the walls. I remember reading in a magazine somewhere that the works of these two artists are now worth a fortune.

Moving past Magnus’s Boer War medal, I stop before Aritomo’s woodblock print of Majuba House, the same one which Frederik wanted my permission to use. I think of the other prints Tatsuji and I examined earlier today, and I think of his tattoo.

There are more books now than before, the additional shelves taking up an entire side of the room. I tilt my head and study some of the titles:
Adrift on the Open Veldt
;
The Voortrekkers;
On Commando; De La Rey: The Lion of the Transvaal.
There are books on the Great Trek and the Boer War, and novels and poetry collections in Afrikaans by writers I know nothing about: C. Louis Leipoldt, C.J. Langenhoven, Eugene Marais, N.P. Van Wyk Louw.

‘Magnus never talked much about the Boer War, or his life in South Africa,’ Frederik says. I have not heard him enter. He is dressed in a grey blazer, a white shirt and a light blue Jim Thompson silk tie; it always pleases me to see someone who has made the effort to be properly dressed. ‘Those books helped me understand the world he had left behind,’ he continues.

‘It was your world too.’

‘But it’s no longer there. It’s gone.’ For a moment he looks lost. ‘You once said something about old countries dying – to be replaced by new ones. Do you remember that?’ His hand makes an awkward flutter in the air, as if he suddenly realises that he has asked me to do something I might no longer be able to.

‘It was the day we met for the first time,’ I say, relieved that I can recall it instantly. ‘At the
braai –
’ I nudge my chin at the windows looking out onto the garden behind the house. The warm glow of shared memories; of the few people left, Frederik is the only one with whom I can truly feel this. ‘And I was right, wasn’t I? Malaya became Malaysia. Singapore broke away from us. And there’s Indonesia, India, Burma...’ Moving further down the shelves, I pull out
The Red
Jungle
and show it to him. ‘I still have the copy you signed for me.’

‘It continues to sell rather well, that and my book on the origins of tea. Unlike my novels – those are out of print now.’

‘Are you working on anything at the moment?’ For a second I am tempted to tell him about what I have been writing.

‘Can’t run a tea estate and still have enough time to write. Perhaps when I retire, I’ll start writing seriously again. Update
The Red Jungle
.’ He hands a tumbler of whisky and soda to me.

‘I hear that Chin Peng wants to come home. Is that true?’

The rumours about the Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party have been floating around in the last few months, but I have not given much thought to them. ‘He can try all he wants, but the government will never let him come back.’

‘Why not? He’s an old man now. He’s been in exile for almost forty years. I think all he wants is to go back to the village where he was born.’

‘Once you step out of your world, it doesn’t wait for you. The world he used to know is gone forever.’ I lower myself into an armchair, the chill of its leather seeping through my slacks.

‘You look vexed. And I doubt it’s caused by the plight of poor old Chin Peng.’

‘Just some problems with the workers.’

‘Ah, yes. The television sets.’

‘The servants have been gossiping to Ah Cheong again, I see.’

‘What do you expect your workers to do after a day’s work, if you refuse to let them have TVs in their homes?’

‘Electronic transmission signals have an adverse effect on insect life in gardens.

Research done by universities has proven this,’ he says. ‘I can show it to you.’

‘You think that by prohibiting TVs in the estate, the signals will disappear and not come into your garden?’ I give a derisive laugh. ‘Consider the rain when it falls on Majuba. Whether you put a bucket outside to catch some of it or not,’ I rattle the ice cubes in my glass, ‘the rain still comes, still floods the earth.’

‘Laugh all you want, woman, but the butterflies
have
returned in greater numbers since I banned TV sets from the estate. So have the insects. And there
are
more birds in Majuba now.

Oh yes.’ He grew excited. ‘In fact, I saw a bulbul. Only yesterday. And a pair of green magpies this morning. We’re getting a lot of birdwatchers coming here.’

‘I thought Emily’s joining us?’

‘She’s getting dressed,’ Frederik says. ‘She moved into the guest room a few years ago.

Said she didn’t need such a big bedroom anymore.’ He smiles, lines crowding into his face. ‘You might remember that room – it was the one you stayed in when you first came here.’

We sit in silence for a while, nursing our drinks. He gives me a sheaf of papers when my glass is empty. ‘I wanted to take this to you, but the past few days have been mad.’

‘What is it?’

‘Your consent for me to use Aritomo’s drawing.’ The look in his eyes sharpens. ‘We spoke about it, remember?’

‘Of course I remember. I’m not senile yet. Give me your pen?’ I sign the papers and push them across the table, the momentum fanning them open like stepping-stones across a pond.

‘You should at least read them first,’ he chides me, gathering up the papers and knocking them into an orderly pile. The skin of his hands, I notice, is spotted with age. The joints of two of his fingers are clogged and swollen, like knobs on the branches of a bonsai tree.

‘You wouldn’t cheat an old woman.’

‘Don’t be too sure.’ His smile balances on the rim of his tumbler for a moment. ‘How long are you staying in Yugiri?’

‘I haven’t really decided – until Tatsuji completes his work here, at the very least.’

We both look to the door when Emily enters. Frederik puts down his glass and hurries over to her, guiding her by the elbow. I stand up. Emily’s hair, pulled back in the way I remember, has whitened completely. Dressed in a grey
qipao
and a cardigan around her shoulders, her body is thin and bowed. Lines pleat her face and her eyes have a smudge of feebleness in them.

‘
Wah
... if only Magnus could be here today,’ she says, a smile floating to her lips, her voice arid with age.

‘Hello Emily.’ The thought occurs to me that I am now much older than she was when I met her the first time. Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leaves pressing down on other leaves, layer upon layer. ‘You’re looking sprightly.’

‘
Choi!
That word always makes me think of old men with skinny legs walking their noisy lap dogs.’

The smells of food leak from the kitchen; the scent of the coriander is familiar to me, even after nearly forty years, but the name eludes me and I have to hunt for it in my mind. I wonder if the decay is spreading faster than I have been warned it would, but I elbow that thought aside. I groan to cover my relief when I remember the name. ‘
Boerewors
.’ It is a terrible feeling, being unable to tell if my forgetfulness is normal for my age, or if it’s indicative of the steepening of the slide.
Boerewors.
I tell myself I must include the name in what I have been writing when I get back to it later tonight.

‘I have them flown in from the Cape every six months,’ Frederik says. ‘Along with a box of Constantia red.’

A wine for exiles. It was something Aritomo once said.

* * *

Coming to the end of our dinner, Emily begins to drift in and out of our conversation, confusing the present with the past. Frederik catches my eye once or twice when it happens and I give him a small nod of sympathy. Now and then he corrects her gently, but mostly he plays along, letting her take pleasure in her memories.

‘A nightcap?’ Frederik asks her when we get up from the dining table to move to the living room.

Emily pats her hand over her mouth. ‘It’s past my bedtime already.’ She looks at me.

‘You’ll have to forgive an old woman for all the nonsense I talked-
lah
.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ I assure her.

‘We’ll have tea one of these mornings? Just the two of us.’

I promise her, and Frederik takes her back to her room. ‘Not one of her better nights,’ he says when he returns to the living room a few minutes later. ‘She’s usually sharper in the morning. But I know she’s really pleased to see you.’ He hands me a glass of sherry and sits across from me. ‘Has that historian of yours looked at the prints yet?’

‘He’ll be coming to Yugiri to catalogue them.’

‘What he said the other day, about Aritomo dabbling in tattoos? Magnus had a tattoo.

Here.’ He touches the area above his heart with his palm, as though he is about to swear an oath.

‘I had forgotten all about it until he mentioned it.’

Somewhere in the house a clock starts chiming. I wait until it has stopped and the house has settled into silence again. My chair creaks softly when I lean forward. ‘He showed it to you?’

‘We were hiking in the mountains one day – this was when I was a boy, visiting him. On our way home we stopped to cool off under a waterfall. That’s when I saw it.’ He nods in growing realisation when I do not respond. ‘You’ve seen it too?’

‘He never liked talking about it.’ I twist my body to look at the woodblock print on the wall behind me. ‘I’d like to borrow that to show it to Tatsuji.’