The Garden of Evening Mists (3 page)

Something seemed to detach from inside me and crumble away, leaving me less complete than before.

‘I saw it in yesterday’s papers,’ said Frederik.

‘That photograph they took of me was dreadful, utterly dreadful.’

The lights in the garden came on, dizzying the flying insects. A frog croaked. A few other frogs took up the call and then more still until the air and earth vibrated with a thousand gargles.

‘Ah Cheong’s gone home,’ said Frederik. ‘He’ll come tomorrow morning. I brought you some groceries. I imagine you haven’t had time to go to the shops yet.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you.’

‘There’s something I need to discuss with you. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if you’re up to it?’

‘I’m an early riser.’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ His eyes hovered over my face. ‘You’re going to be alright on your own?’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He looked unconvinced, but nodded. Then he turned and walked away, taking the path I had just come along, and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.

In the pond, the heron shook out its wings, tested them a few times and flew off. It circled the area once, gliding past me. At the end of its loop the bird opened its wings wide and followed the trail of stars that were just appearing. I stood there, my face turned upwards, watching it dissolve into the twilight.

* * *

Returning to my bedroom, I remember the plate of papaya Ah Cheong brought me. I make myself eat the remaining slices, then unpack my bags and hang my clothes in the cupboard. In the last few years I have heard people complaining that the highlands’ climate is no longer as cool as it used to be, but I decide to put on a cardigan anyway.

The house is dark when I emerge from my room, and I have to remember my way along the twisting corridors. The tatami mats in the sitting room crackle softly when I walk on them, parched of oil from the press of bare soles. The doors to the verandah are open. Ah Cheong has placed a low, square table here, with thin rattan mats on each side of it. Below the verandah, five dark grey rocks, spaced apart, sit on a rectangular bed of gravel covered in leaves. One of the rocks is positioned further away from the others. Beyond this area, the ground slopes gently away to the edge of the pond.

Frederik arrives, looking unhappy about having to sit on the floor. He drops a manila folder onto the table and lowers his body into a cross-legged position, wincing as he makes himself comfortable on the mat.

‘Does it feel strange to be back here?’ he asks.

‘Everywhere I turn, I hear echoes of sounds made long ago.’

‘I hear them too.’

He unties the string around the folder and arranges a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘The designs for our latest range. This one here…’ a forefinger skates a sheet across the table’s lacquered surface to me, ‘…this is for the packaging.’

The emblem used in the illustrations is familiar; what initially appear to be the veins of a tealeaf transform into a detailed drawing of the valleys, with Majuba House mazed into the lines.

‘From the woodblock print Aritomo gave Magnus?’ I say.

‘I’d like to use it,’ Frederik says. ‘I’ll pay you, of course – royalties, I mean.’

Aritomo had bequeathed Yugiri and the copyright in all his literary and artistic works to me. With rare exceptions I have never allowed anyone to reproduce them. ‘Use it,’ I say. ‘I don’t want any payment.’

He does not hide his surprise.

‘How is Emily?’ I cut him off before he speaks. ‘She must be what, eighty-eight?’ I try to remember how old his aunt had been when I met her all those years ago.

‘She’ll have a fit if she hears that. She turned eighty-five this year.’ He hesitates. ‘She’s not well. Some days her memory would shame an elephant’s, but there are also days... ’ His voice tapers away into a sigh.

‘I’ll see her once I’ve settled in.’ I know that Emily, like so many older Chinese, places great importance on having a younger person visit them first, to give them face.

‘You’d better. I’ve told her you’re back.’

I wave a hand out to the garden. ‘Your workers have been taking good care of Yugiri.’

‘Judges aren’t supposed to lie.’ The smile on Frederik’s face sinks away a second later.

‘We both know my boys don’t have the skills to maintain it. And besides – as I keep telling you – I honestly don’t have the knowledge – or the interest, or the time – to make sure they do their work properly. The garden needs your attention.’ He stops, then says, ‘By the way, I’ve decided to make some changes to Majuba’s garden.’

‘What kind of changes?’

‘I’ve hired a landscape gardener to help me,’ Frederik says. ‘Vimalya started her gardening service in Tanah Rata a year ago. She very much a fan of indigenous gardens.’

‘Following the trend.’ I do not bother to sieve the disdain from my voice.

His face twitches with annoyance. ‘We’re going back to everything nature intended.

We’re using plants and trees native to the region. We’ll let them grow the way they would have done in the wild, with as little human assistance – or interference – as possible.’

‘You’re removing all the pine trees in Majuba? And the firs, the eucalyptuses... the roses, the irises... the... the strelitzias?’

‘They’re alien. All of them.’

‘So is every single tea bush here. So am I. And so are you, Mr Pretorius.
Especially
you.’

It is none of my concern, I know, but for almost sixty years, ever since Frederik’s uncle Magnus established Majuba Tea Estate, its formal gardens have been admired and loved.

Visitors have been coming from all over the country to enjoy an English garden in the tropics.

They walk among the meticulously shaped hedges and voluptuous flowerbeds, the herbaceous borders and the roses Emily planted. It pains me to hear that the garden is to be transformed, made to appear as though it forms part of the tropical rainforest crowding in around us – overgrown and unkempt and lacking any order.

‘I’ve told you before, a long time ago – Majuba’s gardens are too artificial. The older I get, the more I don’t believe in having nature controlled. Trees should be allowed to grow as they please.’ Frederik swings his gaze to the garden. ‘If it were up to me, all of this would be taken out.’

‘What is gardening but the controlling and perfecting of nature?’ I am aware my voice is rising. ‘When you talk about “indigenous gardening”, or whatever it’s called, you already have man involved. You dig out beds, you chop down trees, and you bring in seeds and cuttings. It all sounds very much planned to me.’

‘Gardens like Yugiri’s are deceptive. They’re false. Everything here has been thought out and shaped and built. We’re sitting in one of the most artificial places you can find.’

Sparrows rise from the grass into the trees, like fallen leaves returning to their branches. I think about those elements of gardening Frederik is opposed to, aspects so loved by the Japanese – the techniques of controlling nature, perfected over a thousand years. Was it because they lived in lands so regularly rocked by earthquakes and natural calamities that they sought to tame the world around them? My eyes move to the sitting room, to the bonsai of a pine tree that Ah Cheong has so faithfully looked after. The immense trunk the pine would have grown into is now constrained to a size that would not look out of place on a scholar’s desk, trained to the desired shape by copper wire coiled around its branches. There are some people, like Frederik, who might feel that such practices are misguided, like trying to wield Heaven’s powers on earth. And yet it was only in the carefully planned and created garden of Yugiri that I had found a sense of order and calm and even, for a brief moment of time, forgetfulness.

‘Someone is coming to see me this morning,’ I say. ‘From Tokyo. He’s going to look at Aritomo’s woodblock prints.’

‘You’re selling them? Are you short of money?’

His concern touches me, cools my anger. In addition to being a garden designer, Aritomo had also been a woodblock artist. After I admitted, in an unguarded moment during an interview, that he had left me a collection of his woodblock prints, connoisseurs in Japan tried to convince me to part with them, or to put them on exhibition. I have always refused, much to their resentment; many of them have made it clear that they do not see me as their rightful owner.

‘Professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji contacted me a year ago,’ I say. ‘He wanted to do a book on Aritomo’s prints. I declined to speak to him.’

Frederik’s eyebrows spring up. ‘But he’s coming here today?’

‘I’ve recently made enquiries about him. He’s a historian. A respected one. He’s written articles and books about his country’s actions in the war.’

‘Denying that certain things ever took place, I’m sure.’

‘He has a reputation for being objective.’

‘Why would a historian be interested in Aritomo’s art?’

‘Yoshikawa’s also an authority on Japanese wood-block prints.’

‘Have you read any of his books?’ Frederik asks.

‘They’re all in Japanese.’

‘You speak it, don’t you?’

‘I used to, just enough to get by. Speaking it is one thing, but reading it ... that’s something else.’

‘In all these years,’ Frederik says, ‘all these years, you’ve never told me what the Japs did to you.’ His voice is mild, but I catch the seam of hurt buried in it.

‘What they did to me, they did to thousands of others.’

I trace the lines of the leaf on the tea packaging with my finger. ‘Aritomo once recited a poem to me, about a stream that had dried up.’ I think for a moment, then say, ‘
Though the water
has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name.
’

‘It’s still hard for you isn’t it?’ Frederik says. ‘Even so long after his death.’

It never fails to disconcert me whenever I hear someone mention Aritomo’s ‘death’, even after all this time. ‘There are days when I think he’s still out there, wandering in the mountains, like one of the Eight Immortals of Taoist legend, a sage making his way home,’ I say. ‘But what amazes me is the fact that there are still people who keep coming here, just because they have heard the stories.’

‘You know, he lived here for – what, thirteen years? Fourteen? He walked the jungle trails almost every day. He knew them better than some of the forestry guides. How could he have gotten lost?’

‘Even monkeys fall from trees.’ I try to recall where I have heard this, but it eludes me. It will come back to me, I try to reassure myself. ‘Perhaps Aritomo wasn’t as familiar with the jungle as he thought he was.’ From within the house I hear the bell ringing as someone pulls the rope at the gate. ‘That should be Yoshikawa.’

Frederik presses his hands on the table and gets up with an old man’s grunt. I remain seated, watching the marks his palms have left on the table fade away. ‘I’d like you to be here, Frederik, when I speak to him.’

‘I have to rush. Full day ahead of me.’

Slowly I unfold my body until I am eye to eye with him. ‘Please, Frederik.’

He looks at me. After a moment he nods. 

The historian has arrived precisely at the appointed time, and I wonder if he has heard of how I dealt with advocates who appeared late in my court. Ah Cheong shows him to the verandah a few minutes later.

‘Professor Yoshikawa,’ I greet him in English.

‘Please call me Tatsuji,’ he says, giving me a deep bow, which I do not return. I nod towards Frederik. ‘Mr Pretorius is a friend of mine.’

‘Ah! From Majuba Tea Estate,’ Tatsuji says, glancing at me before bowing to Frederik.

I indicate Tatsuji to the customary seat for an honoured guest, giving him the best view of the garden. He is in his mid-sixties, dressed in a light grey linen suit, a white cotton shirt and a pale blue tie. Old enough to have fought in the war, I think; an almost subconscious assessment I apply to every Japanese man I have met. His eyes roam the low ceiling and the walls and the wooden posts before looking to the garden. ‘Yugiri,’ he murmurs.

Ah Cheong appears with a tray of tea and a small brass bell. I pour the tea into our cups.

Tatsuji looks away when I catch him staring at my hands. ‘Your reputation for refusing to talk to anyone in our circles is well known, Judge Teoh,’ he says when I place a teacup before him. ‘To be honest, I was not surprised when you refused to see me, but I
was
taken aback when you changed your mind.’

‘I have since discovered your impressive reputation.’

‘Notorious would be a better description,’ Tatsuji replies, looking pleased nonetheless.

‘Professor Yoshikawa has the habit of airing unpopular subjects in public,’ I explain to Frederik.

‘Every time there is a movement to change our history textbooks, to remove any reference to the crimes committed by our troops, every time a government minister visits the Yasukuni shrine,’ Tatsuji says, ‘I write letters to the newspapers objecting to it.’

‘Your own people…’ Frederik says, ‘how have they reacted to that?’

For a few moments Tatsuji does not speak. ‘I have been assaulted four times in the last ten years,’ he replies at last. ‘I have received death threats. But still I go on radio shows and television programmes. I tell everyone that we cannot deny our past. We have to make amends.

We
have
to.’

I bring us back to the reason for our meeting. ‘Nakamura Aritomo has been unfashionable for so long. Even when he was still alive,’ I say. ‘Why would you want to write about him now?’

‘When I was younger, I had a friend,’ Tatsuji says. ‘He owned a few pieces of Aritomo-sensei’s
ukiyo-e
. He always enjoyed telling people that they were made by the Emperor’s gardener.’ The historian kisses the rim of his cup and makes an appreciative noise. ‘Excellent tea.’

‘From Majuba estate,’ I tell him.

‘I must remember to buy some,’ Tatsuji tells Frederik.

‘Ooky what? The stuff Aritomo made?’ Frederik says.

‘Woodblock prints,’ Tatsuji replies.

‘Did you bring them?’ I interrupt him. ‘Those prints your friend owned?’

‘They were destroyed in an air-raid, along with his house.’ He waits, and when I do not say anything he continues, ‘Because of my friend, I became interested in Nakamura Aritomo.