The Garden of Evening Mists (4 page)

There is nothing authoritative written on his artworks, or his life after he left Japan; I decided to write something.’

‘Yun Ling doesn’t just give anyone permission to use Aritomo’s artworks, you know,’

Frederik says.

‘I’m aware that Aritomo-sensei left everything he owned to you, Judge Teoh,’ Tatsuji says.

‘You sent this to me.’ I place the wooden stick on the table.

‘You know what it is?’ he asks.

‘It’s the handle of a tattooing needle,’ I reply, ‘used before tattooists switched to electric needles.’

‘Aritomo-sensei produced a completely different type of artwork, one he never disclosed to the public.’ Tatsuji reaches across the table and picks up the handle. His fingers are slender and his nails, I notice, manicured. ‘He was a
horimono
artist.’

‘A what?’ Frederik says, his cup halted halfway to his lips. His hand has a slight tremor.

When was it that I began noticing these little signs of age in people around me?

‘Aritomo-sensei was more than the Emperor’s gardener.’ Tatsuji shapes the knot of his tie with his thumb. ‘He was also a
horoshi
, a tattoo artist.’

I straighten my back.

‘There has always been a close link between the woodblock artist and the
horimono
master,’ Tatsuji continues. ‘They dip their buckets into the same well for inspiration.’

‘And what well is that?’ I ask.

‘A book,’ he says. ‘A novel from China, translated into Japanese in the eighteenth century.
Suikoden
. It became wildly popular when it was published.’

‘Like one of those fads that regularly drives your schoolgirls into a frenzy,’ Frederik remarks.

‘It was much more than that,’ Tatsuji says, raising a forefinger at Frederik before turning to me. ‘I prefer that we speak in private, Judge Teoh. If we can arrange to meet another time...’

Frederik moves to get up, but I shake my head at him. ‘What makes you so certain that Aritomo was a tattoo artist, Tatsuji?’ I say.

The historian glances at Frederik then looks at me. ‘A man I once knew had a tattoo on his body.’ He stops for a few seconds, gazing at emptiness. ‘He told me it had been done by Aritomo-sensei.’

‘And you believed him.’

Tatsuji stares into my eyes and I am struck by the pain in them. ‘He was my friend.’

‘The same friend who had the collection of Aritomo’s woodblock prints?’ I ask. Tatsuji nods. ‘Then you should have brought him here with you today.’

‘He passed away... some years ago.’

For an instant I see Aritomo’s reflection on the surface of the table. I have to restrain from turning around to see if he is standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. I blink once, and he is gone. ‘I agreed to see you on the matter of Aritomo’s woodblock prints,’ I remind Tatsuji. ‘Are you still interested in them?’

‘You will let me use his
ukiyo-e
?’

‘We’ll discuss which of his prints will go into your book once you’ve finished examining them. But there will be no mention of tattoos supposedly created by him.’ I hold up my hand as Tatsuji is about to interrupt. ‘If you breach any of my terms – any of them – I will make sure all copies of your book are pulped.’

‘The Japanese people have a right to appreciate Aritomo-sensei’s works.’

I point to my chest. ‘
I
will decide what the Japanese people have a right to.’ I get to my feet, wincing at my rusting joints. The historian stands up to assist me, but I brush his hand away. ‘I’ll get all the prints together. We’ll meet again in a few days’ time for you to look through them.’

‘How many pieces are there?’

‘I have no idea. Twenty or thirty perhaps.’

‘You have never looked at them?’

‘Only a few.’

‘I am staying at the Smokehouse Hotel.’ The historian writes down the telephone number on a piece of paper and gives it to me. ‘May I see the garden?’

‘It hasn’t been properly looked after.’ I ring the brass bell on the tray. ‘My housekeeper will show you out.’

* * *

The day is turning out to be cloudless, with a strong, clear light pouring into the garden. The leaves of the maple tree by the side of the house have begun to turn, soon to become heavy with red. For some inexplicable reason this maple has always defied the lack of changing seasons in the highlands. I lean against a wooden post, my knuckles kneading the pain in my hip. It will take me a while to get used to sitting in the Japanese style again. From the corner of my eye I catch Frederik watching me.

‘I don’t trust that man, whatever his reputation,’ he says. ‘You should let other experts look at the prints as well.’

‘I don’t have much time here.’

‘But I’d hoped you’d stay for a while,’ he says. ‘There’s our new tea-room I want to show you. The views are magnificent. You can’t leave again so soon.’ He looks at me and a slow realisation slackens his face. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Something in my brain, something that shouldn’t be there.’ I pull my cardigan tighter over my body. I sense him waiting for me to explain. ‘I’ve been having problems with names.

There were occasions when I couldn’t think of the words I wanted to use.’

His hand brushes the air. ‘I have those moments too. That’s just age catching up with us.’

‘This is different,’ I say. He looks at me, and I wonder if I should have kept quiet about it. ‘Sitting in court one afternoon, all of a sudden I couldn’t make head or tail of what I had written.’

‘The doctors, what did they say?’

‘The neurosurgeons ran their tests. They told me what I had suspected. I’m losing my ability to read and write, to understand language, any language. In a year – perhaps more, probably less – I won’t be able to express my thoughts. I’ll be spouting gibberish. And what people say, and the words I see – on the page, on street signs, everywhere – will be unintelligible to me.’ For a few seconds I am silent. ‘My mental competence will deteriorate. Dementia will shortly follow, unhinging my mind.’

Frederik stares at me. ‘Doctors can cure anything these days.’

‘I don’t want to discuss this, Frederik. And keep this to yourself.’ My palm stops him, my palm with its two stubs. A moment later I close my three fingers and draw them back, holding them tight in a bud. I feel as though they have captured something intangible from the air. ‘The time will come when I lose all my faculties... perhaps even my memories,’ I say, keeping my voice calm with an effort.

‘Write it down,’ he says. ‘Write it all down, the memories that are most important to you.

It shouldn’t be difficult – it’ll be like writing one of your judgments.’

I glance sidelong at him. ‘What do you know about my judgments?’

He gives me an embarrassed smile. ‘My lawyers have instructions to send a copy to me, every time the Law Reports publish them. You write well – your judgements are clear and engaging. I can still remember the case about the cabinet minister who used black magic to murder his mistress. You really should compile them into a book.’ The lines on his forehead deepen. ‘You once quoted an English judge. Didn’t he say that words are the tools of a lawyer’s trade?’

‘Soon I won’t be able to use those tools anymore.’

‘I’ll read them to you,’ he says. ‘Whenever you want to hear your own words again, I’ll read them aloud to you.’

‘Don’t you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you? By then I won’t be able to know what anyone says to me!’ He doesn’t flinch from my anger, but the sorrow in his eyes is unbearable to look at. ‘You’d better go,’ I say, pushing myself away from the post. My movements feel slow, heavy. ‘I’ve already made you late.’

He glances at his watch. ‘It’s not important. Just some journalists I have to show around the estate, charm them into writing something complimentary.’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’

A smile skims across his face, capsizing an instant later. He wants to say something more, but I shake my head. He takes the three low steps down from the verandah, then slowly turns around to face me. All of sudden he looks like an old, old man. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I am going for a walk.’

* * *

Ah Cheong hands a walking stick to me at the front door of the house. I shake my head, then take it from him. The stick has a comfortable heft. I look at it for a moment and then return it to him.

Three or four steps later I stop and glance back over my shoulder. He is still standing there in the doorway, looking at me. I feel his eyes pinned on me all the way until I reach the opposite side of the pond. When I look back across the water, he has gone back inside the house.

The air is clean, as if it has never been breathed by any living thing. After the clammy heat of Kuala Lumpur, the change is welcome. It is almost noon, but the sun has slunk behind the clouds.

Lotus pads tile the surface of the pond. There are too many of them; I had not noticed it the previous evening when I arrived. The hedges on the opposite side of the pond had originally been shaped to resemble the waves of an ocean surging to the shore, but they have not been properly clipped and their lines are blurred. The pavilion’s roof beams are sagging. The entire structure seems to be melting, losing the memory of its shape. Leaves and dead insects and bark peelings cover the floor. Something slithers among them and I step back.

The track leading into the garden is paved with rings of slate cut from drill cores discarded from the gold mines of Raub. Each turn in the path reveals a different view; at no point is the entire garden revealed, making it appear more extensive than it actually is.

Ornaments lie half-hidden among the overgrown lallang grass: a granite torso; a sandstone Buddha’s head with his features smoothened by mist and rain; rocks with unusual shapes and striations. Stone lanterns, their eaves curtained with tattered spider webs, squat among the curling ferns. Yugiri was designed to look old from the first stone Aritomo set down, and the illusion of age he had created has been transformed into reality.

Frederik’s workers have been looking after the place, following the instructions I have given them. The garden has been maintained by untrained hands: branches that should have been left to grow pruned away; a view that should have been obscured opened up; a path widened without consideration to the overall harmony of the garden. Even the wind streaming through the shrubs sounds wrong because the undergrowth has been allowed to grow too densely and too high.

The omissions and errors are like the noise generated by a collection of badly tuned musical instruments. Aritomo once told me that of all the gardens he created, this one meant the most to him.

Halfway in my walk through the garden, I stop, turn around and head back to the house.

* * *

The fourteenth-century bronze Buddha in the study has not grown older; his face is unmarked by the cares of the world. Ah Cheong has opened the windows to air the room all day, but the smell of mildew from the books on the shelves ages the twilight filling up the house.

The feeling that something was wrong with me surfaced five or six months ago. I was often awakened by headaches in the night, and I began to tire easily. There were days when I could not summon up any interest in my work. My concerns sharpened into fear when I began to forget names and words. It was not merely the unfolding of age, I suspected, but something more. I was frail when I had emerged from the slave-labour camp, and my health had never recovered completely. I had forced myself to pick up the life I had known before the war. Being an advocate, and later on, a judge, had given me solace; I had found enjoyment in working with words, in applying the law. For over forty years I had succeeded in staving off this exhaustion of the body, but I had always feared that a day would come when there was nothing left to be depleted from me. What I had not expected was how soon, how swiftly that moment had arrived.

I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void.

Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrifies me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

Frederik’s suggestion that I write down the things I do not want to forget has rooted itself into the crevices of my mind. It is futile, I know, but a part of me wants to make sure that, when the time comes, I will still have something that gives me the possibility, however meagre, to orient myself, to help me determine what is real. 

Sitting at Aritomo’s desk, I realise that there are fragments of my life that I do not want to lose, if only because I still have not found the knot to tie them up with.

When I have forgotten everything else, will I finally have the clarity to see what Aritomo and I have been to each other? If I can still read my own words by then, with no knowledge of who had set them down onto the page, will the answers come to me?

Outside, the mountains have been drawn into the garden, becoming a part of it. Aritomo had been a master of
shakkei
, the art of Borrowed Scenery, taking elements and views from outside a garden and making them integral to his creation.

A memory drifts by. I reach for it, as if I am snatching at a leaf spiralling down from a high branch. I have to. Who knows if it will ever come back to me again?

During the Emergency, some of the people who were given a private tour of Majuba Tea Estate would also ask to see Yugiri. And sometimes Aritomo allowed it. On such occasions, I would be waiting for them at the main entrance. Most of the visitors were senior government officials taking a holiday with their wives in Cameron Highlands before going back to waging war on the communist-terrorists hiding in the jungles. They had heard about the garden in the mountains and wanted to see it for themselves, to boast to their friends that they had been one of the privileged few to have walked in it. Murmurs of anticipation would warm the air as I welcomed the group. ‘What does Yugiri mean?’ someone – usually one of the wives – would ask, and I would answer them, ‘Evening Mists.’