The Garden of Evening Mists (39 page)

‘Will the war be over soon?’

He glanced at me, then turned away to look at the two waterfalls high up in the mountains above the camp. He had lost so much weight that his eyes appeared elongated and misshapen, as though they were melting down his face.

* * *

Tominaga had been absent from the camp for three weeks, the longest he had been away since I met him, and I thought I would not see him again. One afternoon, a guard whispered to me that he had returned. I waited for Tominaga to summon me as he had always done, but when night fell and I still had heard nothing from him, I sneaked out from my hut and went to his quarters.

The hut was in darkness when I got there. I saw him a short distance away, walking between the trees, a paraffin lamp lighting his path. Silently I followed him towards the
jugan ianfu
’s hut. I hid behind a tree and watched him. The men waiting outside the hut stood to attention, bowing to him as he walked past them and went inside.

I was furious with him, but more so with myself. What had I expected from him? He was just like all of them.

He summoned me the next morning after we had sung the
Kimigayo
and bowed to the Emperor in Japan
.
The guards seemed nervous and tense as they moved about the camp. Fumio was barking orders to some of them; I hurried away to avoid him. Tominaga was pacing back and forth outside his hut. He stopped when he saw me. ‘Come with me,’ he said. I refused to look at him. He grabbed my hand and pulled me behind his hut to where his Red Cross van was parked. He removed a strip of black cotton from his pocket, stretching it out between his hands.

‘Put this on!’

I stared at him, still wondering which of the women he had used the previous night.

Despite our friendship, I was terrified that he was going to shoot me after he had blindfolded me.

Perhaps it was
because
of our friendship that he was granting me this courtesy, this mercy.

‘I had your sister reserved for me last night,’ he said. ‘I told her that I would get you out.

My English is not good but she understood what I was telling her.’ Digging his hand into his pocket again, he removed a piece of paper, folded into a small square. ‘She asked me to give this to you.’ He pushed the note into my palm. ‘We do not have much time, Kumomori.’

I recognised Yun Hong’s neat, elegant handwriting when I unfolded the paper.

‘
Remember your promise: Don’t think. Don’t look back. Run
.’

I glanced up from the paper at Tominaga, then looked behind me to the row of huts hidden among the trees. In the darkness of early dawn it was difficult to make them out.

He stepped towards me and I let him blindfold me. I felt him tying my wrists together with a length of twine. Gripping my elbow, he helped me into the back of the van. ‘Do not make a sound,’ he said before closing the doors. I heard him climb into the driver’s seat and a second later the engine rumbled to life. The van lurched and began to move. At the gates he stopped to speak to the guards. I held my breath, straining to hear his words. And then we were on the move again. It was the first time I had left the camp since Yun Hong and I were brought here, almost three years before.
I’ll come back to get you,
I vowed to her silently.
I’ll find the camp again. I’ll
come back for you
.

The road – if there was a road at all – was bad. Now and again a sharp turn slammed me against the sides of the van. Branches clawed the roof. About forty-five minutes to an hour passed before the van swerved to a sudden stop. I heard him get out, walk around to the back and unlock the doors. He helped me out from the van, pulled off my blindfold and untied my hands.

We were in a small clearing. The moon was just sinking behind the mountains. I breathed in long and hard. He handed me a satchel with a bottle of water and pieces of steamed tapioca wrapped in pandanus leaves. Pointing to a track going downhill and into the trees, he said, ‘You will come to a river at the bottom. Follow it out of the jungle. Go. Forget everything you saw.’

‘Where are we? Tell me where the camp is.’

He bowed low to me. ‘The war is over. In a few days the Emperor will announce our surrender.’

Joy and relief made me lightheaded. ‘That means we’ll be freed.’

‘None of the prisoners will be released, Yun Ling.’

Hearing my own name uttered from his lips confused me. For a brief moment I did not know who he was addressing. Then I understood what he had said.

‘Take me back to the camp!’ I turned towards the van. ‘Take me back!’

He spun me around and slapped me, twice. He shoved me, and I fell face down to the ground. I heard him climbing back into his van. The engine started, the van reversed, and then he drove off.

Silence returned to the jungle. I got to my feet, picked up the satchel and ran in the direction in which he had driven off. I slipped on patches of moss, I tripped over stones and roots. I had to stop frequently to catch my breath. Eventually I slowed to a walk. I got lost twice and wasted precious time trying to get back to my trail. In the end I had no idea if I was still going in the right direction. I wanted to give up, but I kept walking. I had to get back to the camp.

The sun was high when I came to the edge of a ravine. The sky was clear to the east but, behind me, storm clouds were moving in over the mountains. I drank the last mouthful of water from the flask and then threw it away. My eyes swept the valleys for the two waterfalls I had often seen from the camp. Using them as a marker, I searched for the mine, finding it a minute later below the shoulder of a limestone cliff. Hope revived me.

I clambered up a rock face to get a better view. The prisoners were gathered outside the mine’s entrance, hemmed in by the guards. I tried to pick out Yun Hong from the crowd, but I was too high up. A man in a grey robe and an oddly shaped hat paced outside the mine, waving something in his hand that gave off smoke. Incense, I realised a second later.

From inside the mine a figure appeared, growing taller as he came up the sloping tunnel.

He was dressed in white, and I knew it was Tominaga, even though I could not make him out clearly. He stopped in front of the prisoners and did something no one had ever done to them – to us – before: keeping his arms to his sides, he folded his body into a deep bow.

Straightening up again, he gave a signal to the guards. They began herding the prisoners into the jungle, away from the direction of our camp. Finally Tominaga was the only person left standing outside the mine. I had to move quickly, I had to get down to the mine and find out where the prisoners were being taken before I lost their trail. But something compelled me to see what Tominaga was up to.

He backed away from the entrance, moving until he was almost at the edge of the jungle.

Then he stopped. On the wind came a series of faint detonations. And then, silence. Dust and smoke stormed out from the mine a moment later, but Tominaga continued to stand there, letting the cloud from deep below the earth engulf him completely. When the wind thinned the dust a moment later, he remained, stock still in the same position. Then he turned away from the mine and entered the jungle without a backward glance.

Then the hill above the mine sheared away, pulling everything down with it – trees, rocks, earth.

Rain was falling when I finally descended into the valley. I had no idea how much time had passed – perhaps two hours, perhaps four. I could not find the camp, then I realised that I was already inside it. The fence had been taken down. Every single one of the huts was gone, and the prisoners’ vegetable patch had been covered with earth. Even the rubble had been removed. There was no trace of the camp left.

I ran to the mine, recognising it only from the fresh landslide burying its entrance, saplings and trees sticking out of the churned soil. I looked at the jungle around me, searching for the path the prisoners had taken.

Thunder rolled from somewhere over the mountains. It sounded again, the ground trembling lightly, and I knew it was not thunder. A third explosion came, echoing in the mountains. I tried to pinpoint where it came from. It was impossible. I caught sight of a well-trodden path leading into the jungle and ran towards it. The rain fell harder, blinding me and turning the trail into a river of mud. I did not know how long I kept going, but eventually I had to stop and take shelter beneath some low-hanging branches.

It was late morning when I opened my eyes again. The storm was over, but water still dripped from the branches and leaves. Shivering, I stood up and went to the edge of an escarpment. The thin morning mists were lifting off from the treetops. The jungle seemed to go on forever, and I knew I would only get lost if I went further into it. I made my way back to the mine. The rain had washed down more debris from the mountain during the night. My knees gave out and I collapsed to the ground. My weeping was the only sound in the silence.

Eventually I got up. It was time for me to leave. Turning to the jungle where the guards had taken the prisoners, I fixed the shapes and colours of the mountains and the limestone ridges into my memory, and I vowed to Yun Hong that I would come back for her, to free her spirit from where she had been immured.

I limped back to the camp and continued into the jungle, retracing the path I had used earlier, hoping I would be able to find my way out. Branches and thorns drew blood from my face and arms. All the time I had the feeling that I was being pursued by a wild animal. Perhaps a tiger was tracking me. Or maybe a demon of the jungle was stalking me, making me walk in confused circles. I was feverish. My bones ached. The moment came when I knew I could go on no further. In a hollow formed by the buttresses of a fig tree I lay down and shut my eyes. I sensed the creature that had been hunting me closing the gap between us. The undergrowth rustled, then shook harder. I opened my eyes. I heard the creature coming nearer, and then the ferns in front of me parted.

An aboriginal boy of fifteen or sixteen stood before me. He wore only a loincloth, and he had a blowpipe held near to his lips. Keeping his eyes on me all the while, he reached into a small bamboo tube hanging by his waist and took out a dart about four inches long. He inserted it into his blowpipe, tamping the mouthpiece with a small piece of cloth. Then he brought the mouthpiece to his lips. At the back of my mind lay the knowledge that those darts were tipped with poison, but I was too exhausted to care anymore.

The boy aimed the blowpipe at me, puffed up his cheeks and blew the dart into my chest.

* * *

The shouts and laughter of children came from a distance, waking me. My vision was watery, but I could see that the wounds on my arms had been dressed; they smelled of an earthy concoction. I was lying under a coarse blanket in the corner of a long room. I heard voices; it sounded as though there were many other people around me. Underneath the floorboards, pigs grunted and chickens scratched in the dirt.

Despite my repeated questioning, the Orang Asli refused to tell me what tribe they were.

Twenty to thirty families lived together in the longhouse, each with its own space, completely open. They let me stay with them for a week. Maybe it was longer; I do not remember much of that period. I drifted in and out of consciousness. During the brief moments when I was lucid, I wondered if they had drugged me. A constant flow of people came to squat and gawk at me, but they kept silent. The Malay I spoke was not much different from theirs, but I suspected they felt it was safer to pretend not to understand me. Only once did the headman speak to me, to tell me that the boy had not been trying to kill me with his dart, but only to make me unconscious so he could go for help.

When I recovered my strength, the headman got the same boy to lead me back into the jungle. He took me to Ipoh, the nearest town. I sensed that he had been instructed to take a long and confusing route, to prevent me from finding my way back to them again. They did not want me to return and bring trouble to their village, I supposed.

It took us four, five days to emerge from the jungle onto a tarred road. He pointed me in the direction and said, ‘Ipoh.’ I asked for his name, but he only waved, turned around and slipped back into the jungle.

A lorry driver transporting a load of tapioca into town stopped and gave me a lift. He told me that Japan had surrendered twenty days before. The war was over.

The nuns in the temple were still chanting when I stopped speaking. ‘The war was over,’ I said again. It should have made me feel better, allowing what I had kept bottled up inside me to bleed away, but it did not.

‘Let me see your hand,’ Aritomo said. ‘Take off your glove.’

He had seen it uncovered so many times already. I made no movement. He nodded to me, and I removed my left glove, exposing the two stumps. He took my hand, his fingers stroking the scars. ‘You are left-handed,’ he said.

‘Fumio was aware of that too. I had to learn to do some of the simplest things all over again.’

‘The sketch of the
kore-sansui
garden you saw in Tominaga Noburu’s hut,’ said Aritomo.

‘What did it look like?’

I thought for a moment. ‘Three stones in one corner, and two low, flat grey rocks diagonally opposite them, and behind them a miniature pine tree shaped like a dented temple bell.’

‘The dry mountain-water garden at his grandfather’s summer home at Lake Biwa,’ said Aritomo. ‘Three centuries old and famous all over Japan.’ He paused. ‘Tominaga-san was a knowledgeable man where the Art of Setting Stones is concerned.’

‘But he’s not as skilled as you.’

‘He considered himself to be. Tominaga-san was a cousin of the Empress,’ he continued, so softly that I thought he was talking to himself. ‘We have known each other since we were boys of five or six.’

‘It was him you quarrelled with over the garden designs.’ I should have realised it sooner.

‘Tominaga was the reason the Emperor had to sack you.’ When Aritomo did not reply, I said, ‘It was absurd to fight over a garden.’