by Unknown
After half an hour, Joyce, who was still sitting in the back, retreated into music. Whenever Sinha turned around to emphasise a point, she would just nod sagely. He never seemed to notice the little earphone wires which ran from her ears to her bag.
There was an exhausting sameness about the villages through which they travelled, and all three were visibly glad when they reached the gate of the park and were met by a small, fuzzy-faced, pop-eyed man by the name of Icksan Dubeya.
‘Go up to the house first,’ he said. ‘There you meet the owner, Sulim Abeya Tambi. He will explain to you what he wants.’
‘What was the position of the two people who died, please?’ Wong asked.
‘They were on the jungle trek. You’ll see later.’
‘No, I think he means like, the position in the company,’ said Joyce. ‘You just said go and see the owner. But our contact in Malaysia, he said the owners were eaten.’
‘Yes, they were co-owners with Mr Tambi. The people who were eaten. Mr and Mrs Legge. They were all partners. But now they are dead. Eaten by lions. Not a nice way to go.’ The man smiled, showing a mouthful of dirty teeth.
‘So Mr Tambi has become owner of the whole operation?’ Joyce asked, doing her Girl Detective bit. ‘Like, is it better for him that way? With the others out of the way?’
‘You may think so.’
She found Dubeya’s tone hard to interpret. Did he mean it was better, or that we might think it better but would be wrong? His expression was made even harder to fathom by the fact that his eyes appeared to be looking in different directions. He gruffly pointed to a fork in the road ahead of them, and told them to head to the left and follow the No Entry signs.
Wong lifted his clutch foot and the car jerked back to life.
They slowly travelled up a long, curving drive. To the left, they saw a tall fence enclosing a thick forest—doubtless the outer edge of the animal sanctuary. They passed several small buildings of a practical nature—garages, storerooms, something that looked like a stable—before the road turned again, and the Proton scrunched onto the gravel of a large, low house. It was built in yellow stone, in the old colonial style, but had a certain boxiness about it that gave away its more recent origins.
The geomancer ran his eyes over the outside of the building carefully. It was modelled on the plantation villas of early Singapore. The house was raised on piles, Malay style, but had European deep verandahs. Decorated eaves and suspended lattice-work in Kallang fashion suggested a Chinese architect, but one with eclectic tastes: the windows had Portuguese shutters.
The lower verandahs were hung with mosquito nets in a rather lurid shade of pink, presently common in that part of Malaysia. Sinha laughed: ‘No doubt some scientist worked out the colour the creatures would like least, ignoring the fact that human beings would find it equally repugnant.’
Standing in the porch was their host. Sulim Abeya Tambi was an obese, sweaty man with curls of jet hair plastered onto a mottled dark brown face. He wore white robes in light cotton, which were too thin to be flattering, and his belly bounced in lazy synchronisation with his waddling gait. He was tall, more than 2 metres in height, and had hands like spades.
‘Come in, come in, how nice of you to come, do come and make yourselves comfortable,’ he sang effusively, in a high and wispy voice, but with an unexpectedly educated English accent. He led the visitors into an old-fashioned hall, featuring dark stained wood and a mess of garments and boots on a low table.
They followed him through to a large, open sitting room, and were urged to sit on some rather uncomfortable rattan furniture. Tambi then disappeared to find a servant boy to bring them some fresh king coconut.
‘Ouch. I hate these seats,’ said Joyce, squirming on a low armchair. ‘They’ve got like, little sharp bits which go right through your Levi’s.’
After the bustle and activity of their arrival, silence returned to the room. And then, the quiet sounds of the jungle started to drift in over the verandah: buzzing, fizzing noises, plus a sort of low hiss. Occasionally there were bird calls which sounded almost human. Joyce had turned off her personal stereo out of politeness, but there was still a song playing in her mind. She consciously stopped it running through her head, and then rose to go and stand on the verandah. She stared at the sea of green before her. Something made a caw caw sound far in the distance. There was something hypnotic about the scene.
Three minutes later, their rotund host reappeared and seated himself grandly on a wicker chair which had a pair of fold-out planks on which he rested his ankles. ‘So glad to have you here. It’s been an absolutely horrible summer, and we desperately need to start afresh—which is where your advice is needed,’ he said.
Little vertical lines appeared above his eyebrows as he assumed an expression of deeply felt pain. ‘Three weeks ago we were on the brink of the realisation of a dream. We had twenty-five full-time staff. We had a host of animals, including five lions. All the advertising was lined up in magazines throughout the country and the region even. Journalists were waiting to come and see what we had in store. Travel agents were taking bookings for tours which would include a visit to Tambi’s Trek, which would fast become the most essential part of any visit to Malaysia.’
He took a swig of coconut through a straw that seemed ridiculously thin to feed such a huge frame.
‘And then it all went wrong.’ He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if he was speaking to the ceiling. ‘The death of my dear, dear friends and partners meant the death of my dream. Who would come to an animal park where even the people who run it were not safe? Who would even come near such a place?’
He suddenly opened his eyes and stared at his visitors.
‘Would you? Would you? Would you, young lady?’
‘Well, um,’ said Joyce, who wondered whether she should point out that she had comenear such a place.
‘Exactly. You would not. All the tours were cancelled. All the advertising was withdrawn. All the staff—ungrateful wretches—fled except for my cousin Dubeya, whom you met. I prepared, as is my tradition, to go into a long period of mourning, and abandon the project. I was devastated, as I had known Gerry and Martha Legge for many years and considered them my best friends. But then, I thought, No. Let me try once more. In their memory. They loved animals, as I do. Let me do it, not for myself, but for them.’
He moved forwards, lowered his feet to the ground, and shifted to the edge of his seat. He looked directly into Wong’s eyes. The others watched uncomfortably as the chair tilted forwards under his weight.
‘And that is what you have to do for me. Make it safe. Not only make it safe, but give it the feeling of safety. Make everyone who steps into Tambi’s Trek feel this is the most secure place in the world. Make them feel they can leave their children and babies on the ground here and nothing will happen to them. Reorganise. Redesign. Check every inch of the house. Check every inch of the grounds. If it costs money, I don’t mind. What changes you want me to make, I will make. It may cost me millions, but closing it down and abandoning my ideas will also cost me millions.’
Tambi’s expression changed again, this time to one of a humble supplicant. ‘I am not asking much,’ he said. ‘Only a miracle. Can you do this?’
Wong looked down at the briefing papers in front of him for a moment. Then he looked Tambi in the eye. ‘Miracles we have fifteen per cent extra surcharge. Is it okay?’
Wong spent the next four hours sitting at a huge dining table—it seemed designed to seat about thirty people—with his book of charts, a map of the theme-park grounds, and a map of the district in front of him. He scribbled, he scrawled, he calculated, he drew charts on tracing paper, he overlaid sheets onto sheets, he looked at books full of trigrams, he mumbled to himself and he pulled at the hairs on his chin.
Joyce wandered around the house, and peered out of the windows at the jungle. There were weird-sounding birds calling and unseen creatures chattering and she thought she could he
ar a lion roar. It was all so deliciously exciting and exotic! It really was like being in a movie. She imagined herself a jungle dweller, greeting a nervous visitor—Brad Pitt, preferably—and impressing him with her ability to run a fabulous home in the depths of the rainforest. She paced the corridors, lost in a fantasy. Suddenly chancing upon the wild-eyed Dubeya emerging from what she had thought was an empty room, she suddenly felt frightened, and returned to sit by Wong in the dining room.
Sinha slept for a few hours in a guest room, and then woke up suddenly at tea time, coming downstairs with his white hair standing on end and a raging thirst for earl grey.
He arrived just in time to hear Wong’s initial exegesis of the site to his young assistant. ‘There are problems. I can see. We have too much water to the west. Right next to the mountains. This is known as “mountain star falling into water”. It is not a good sign. This needs to be fixed.’
‘Oh right, so we are going to move the lake and the mountain,’ said Joyce. ‘Fine. I’ll do that and you can get on with something else.’
‘It would be hard to move the lake and the mountain,’ Wong said. ‘We must compensate for it by other ways. But there are good signs on this big map too. Look further this way. You see this range of mountains. It forms almost an embracing road. A path of affection. Roads curving around things are good. See how this line embraces this part here? This means that Tambi’s Trek is in part of a dragon’s lair.’
He pulled the close-up map of the theme park closer to him, and then compared the two. ‘There seems to be an arm of this mountain range coming down here, which actually comes into the park. It forms a lifted-up flat bit here. What do you call it? A platter?’
‘A plateau.’
‘Yes. Now this good force will come down this way. But is being dispersed by the wind. We need a body of water to stop it dispersing. There is a body of water just here. It needs to be made a bit bigger until it comes nearer to the plateau. We will tell them to make it wider. If they can. Or set up a spring or waterfall. Or even a tap. At this point here.’
Tambi, who had been hovering in the doorway, entered the room and peered over the geomancer’s shoulder. ‘I am fascinated that you identified this part as the interesting part. Can you tell, from this map, what is under here? We once had some visitors who were in the mining business, and they said there could be ore under here. Possible?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said the geomancer. ‘This shape of the mountains and the water is very common for metal underground. Look. The soil ch’i here leads to this flat part. Then there is the water here. This part is strong, thriving. But soil ch’i and water ch’i do not thrive together. Unless there is metal ch’i between them. Soil ch’i damages water ch’i. But soil-metal-water is what we call the support cycle of the Later Heaven. This is a good area. It may be because there is metal hidden here, under.’
‘Absolutely fascinating,’ said Tambi, wiping his sweaty hands on his white trousers. ‘I await your full report with interest.’
After a preliminary examination of the area on paper, Wong told the others he would spend the afternoon doing a feng shui reading of the house, and devote the following day to travelling around the park itself.
During a heavy dinner at the same long table that night, they heard the grim story of the Legges.
‘He was a wonderful man. He loved the lions. And they loved him,’ said Tambi.
‘They ate him,’ said Joyce.
‘Yes, but that was because of a misjudgement on his part. Lions, you see—and animals in general, I suppose—they behave instinctively. They do what they have been programmed to do, like computers. They have no choices.’
He paused and took a long drag from his cigar—a rather damp cheroot which he had had trouble lighting.
‘Lions, you may or may not know, do not eat three meals a day like we do. They gorge themselves on meat one day, and will happily go for the next three, four, five days with nothing at all to eat. They are quite docile, especially just after a meal. But you would not want to get out of the car next to them when they haven’t eaten for many days and are ready for their next meal.’
‘Is that what the unfortunate couple did?’ Sinha asked. ‘Dear me. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I had a great uncle who was eaten by one of the last tigers in south China. It’s really quite a good story—’
Tambi interrupted: ‘It was most unpleasant. There was no one with them, of course, so we had to piece it together afterwards. What we think happened is that Martha and Gerald went in to the Trek in the middle of the morning, because they had heard that one of the wildebeest had been seen limping badly, and also because a rare bird had been reported in the sanctuary, some crested something-or-other. The lions were due to be fed later that day, so were hungry. Normally, there is no danger, even in going in when the lions have not been fed—as long as you do not get out of the car near one of the beasts. They know they cannot bite through metal. They perceive the cars as big, metal, inedible beasts. They will leave you alone if you stay in the car. Our lions are well-trained. When we are feeding them, we take the meat in, we throw it on the ground, then we press the car horn repeatedly. This sound they have learned is their summons to dinner. We stay in the car. Absolutely crucial.’
He shifted his weight in his chair, which creaked loudly, and took another drag from his cigar.
‘But they did not. They got out of the car. Heaven knows why. Gerald had a miraculous ability to be friendly with the lions—they would literally eat out of his hand. I have seen them take a piece of liver from his hand. But to get out of the car on feeding day before the lions have been fed is not wise.’
Tambi screwed up his face in an expression of agony. His voice cracked. ‘For some reason—I don’t know why—for some reason they thought they would risk it. My cousin Dubeya found the bodies. He had gone in to feed the lions about two hours after the Legges had been seen alive for the last time. He found their four-wheel-drive car on the edge of the road with the doors open on both sides.’
He reached forwards and stirred a large pot of glass vermicelli. A pungent aroma of chilli and lemongrass drifted over the table from a dish of unidentified meat.
‘The remains of Martha and Gerald were stretched over an area of many yards. It was not a pleasant sight. Lions, you see, do not go primarily for flesh. They go for entrails, first. If you ever see a big cat eating an animal, you will see it will go for the belly first, rip it open, and then pull out the internal organs, the colon, the stomach. Only later will it devour the muscles. The whole thing was a mess.’
He shivered. ‘The staff fled. Everyone went except my cousin. Picking up the pieces of the Legges must have been an unbelievably terrible job. Dubeya did it—after we had the police in, of course, to check the scene. The remains were sent for autopsy. Death by misadventure. They were tucked away in coffins by the time their relatives arrived to bury them.’
Yuk,’ said Joyce. ‘What a horrible story.’
Tambi nodded. ‘A horrible story. Now it is only me and Dubeya—two humans and five lions. More lions than humans in this place.’
The servant boy, who apparently did not count as a human, entered with more dishes.
Tambi turned to Joyce: ‘I hope you brought a camera, dear child. You’ll see lots of birds and some strange cow that you only get in this part of the world.’
‘Neat,’ the young woman replied, without enthusiasm.
‘We go into the park tomorrow,’ said Wong. ‘The lions, I hope they have been fed already.’
‘Actually, feeding time is tomorrow night. But don’t worry. You’ll be quite safe. Dubeya will go in with you. I may even come myself. We will be with you at all times. Your internal organs will be quite safe. Now, who would like some chicken liver?’
The next morning, Wong did not appear for breakfast. The servant boy told Tambi that the old Chinese man had risen very early, had a bite in the kitchen, and then had spent the morning walking around the outside of the
house and drawing plans.
Tambi later found Wong working at a desk in his bedroom.
‘Good to see you are taking your mission so seriously. What have you discovered?’
The old geomancer pulled out a list he had made in tiny, finely drawn Chinese characters. ‘There are many small changes you need to make to this house. But not difficult or expensive. Problem really is that it is long, narrow. Runs south to north. This means imbalance of directional ch’i energy. Not enough from west and east. You can compensate for such problems. I will make list for you in English. No problem I think.’
‘And what about our troublesome little jungle?’
‘There is water problem and dispersal of ch’i problem. But these can be fixed too. This is not well-designed to be jungle park. I see there is a new fence which is not on the map. To the west. Just here.’ Wong stood up and pointed out of the window. ‘Behind the trees. That fence not on map. Also there is some equipment there.’
‘Oh, yes. Well, we started to make some changes soon after the Legges died. There is some, er, swampy ground there that needs draining, so we put draining equipment in. We took some advice from a local bomoh, and he said it was okay that we cut off a bit of the jungle and work on it a bit. There’s still plenty of room left for the lions.’
‘But cutting that area off is very bad. Bad for flow of energy. Bad for feng shui. And there should be no swamp problem there, I think. Maybe mistake.’
‘We’ll fix it. It’s only a temporary problem. Now come down and have a cup of tea. I understand that you had breakfast at 5.30. That’s two and a half hours ago. Definitely you must be thirsty or hungry again.’