Day two was tougher from the outset. Though the thick shrub subsided on the gradual ascent, a fierce morning sun warmed the air beneath the leaves. Sweat clung to his body like a needy child, but they marched with impressive pace. Eventually they came to the face of a rock, where the forest split in two directions. Both pressed their backs against the coldness of the stone.
‘We should climb it,’ she said, ‘see what we can see.’
‘We’ll see trees.’
‘You’re so American.’ She removed a jumble of ropes and hinged mechanisms from her bag. He assembled them, remembering how they’d looked in his hands as he dangled from a Gibraltan clifftop, and they climbed.
The rock’s peak emerged above the canopy, where they rested and tried to comprehend what they saw. To the west, beyond flocks of white-winged wood ducks bombing the treetops, the oily smoke of machinery swirled, and the noise of diggers building palm oil plantations. He’d never thought much about offspring. He hadn’t had the cause. But here, above the jungle, with Harum beside him, he was struck by a sudden prescience. What would the world look like for his children, if he had any? What would be left? If there was a sign that preceded evil, it was more likely the whirr of machinery in the rainforest than the corpse flower in bloom.
‘Which way do we go?’ he asked. She nodded towards an amber sun.
They descended the rock face, shouldered their rucksacks, and hiked. The land was steep, the jungle thinning with the air. To stand a better chance of finding the corpse flower in bloom they’d need to reach the lowland forest on the other side of a vast ridge, where the vegetation was thicker. They arrived at a high-altitude glacial lake, a replica sky captured in it, and decided to swim across and set up camp on the far side, so that on the third morning – when all around them was lit a glorious fiery orange by the sunrise – they could begin the hunt proper with a gradual descent, just as exhaustion set in.
They’d trekked half a day into the rainforest’s heart and Peter’s machete blade was blunting when he noticed the scuffed metal of a stub pistol’s snout peeking from the pocket on Harum’s bag.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’
‘My cousin gave it to me. Said it was dangerous this far west. There are loggers and poachers and militia.’
‘Militia!?’
‘You hear about it, sometimes.’
‘So you’d shoot them?’
‘Don’t worry, the chances of us seeing anyone are very small.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘You complain too much.’ She stopped, turned, kissed him – not full on the mouth, more neatly than that – somewhere just south, the bottom half of his lower lip. It took him by surprise, but he kissed her back: clumsily, which made her smile. Then they continued. And despite the gun, despite lawless jungle armies, despite this nagging feeling they were being followed by a tiger – despite Hens Berg – Peter felt a trickle of bliss run through every last smidgeon of his flesh.
Something in his mouth. Buzzing. Crawling. He spat, and then he saw them: a swarm of carrion flies, thronging on the trunk of the tree where he leant. It was huge, magnificent, no different from the millions around it, but this is where they’d collected, as if this one tree was erected in honour of a great insect deity. It was as Peter had read.
He took the machete and swung it over the cluster of flies until they dispersed like a shower of raisins. Sure enough, beneath them was a plump, bruise-coloured bud. This was the genesis of the corpse flower, tiny at first, but what would become an example of the largest-known individual flower in the world. It was free of roots and leaves, and lived most of the time unobservable inside the wooden stem of its host. But this plump bud had exploded through the bark, and, in a prime example of parasitic existence, would soon fill the surrounds with its fruits and foetid funk. From death, came life.
He thought of the verse of 1877 he’d found in a book of poetry inspired by nature in Brooklyn Library one evening, as he tired of Hens’s attempts to dazzle him with science and sought relief in art instead.
What strange gigantic flower is here
That shows its lonesome pallid face
Where neither stems nor leaves appear?
‘How long can we make the rations last if we really try?’ he asked. Harum was distracted elsewhere. Peter couldn’t draw his eyes from the bud. Its shape, the way it was opening, made him think of childbirth.
‘What?’
‘Perhaps we could stay here and watch it grow. I mean, if we go back, we might miss it. It only blooms for a few days.’
‘I don’t think we need to do that.’
He stabbed his blade into the mud. How could she be so nonchalant after they’d come this far?
‘You’re crazy if you think we’ll find this spot again so easily.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘We won’t need to.’ Peter felt her tug at his elbow. He turned, half expecting to see a tiger. But in the direction she was looking, twenty metres away, was a corpse flower in full bloom. Over a metre in diameter, mahogany skin speckled with splotches of white, five lobes arranged in a cup-like structure. And in the middle of the cup, a column with a disc, anthers in its open jaws, like a giant mouth carved from meat. Ugliness, beauty, putrid majesty. He breathed in deep and could smell it now. How could he not have done before? An abattoir in summer.
The final flower on the letter’s list. He had done what the love-struck student who wrote it never could. He wished that he could find him and tell him. Maybe that could be his next, much less dangerous, adventure.
Asoka had at least been right about one thing. It looked like an entrance to hell. They approached it carefully, as if it might snarl. Every flower they’d ever seen claimed a unique stake in nature. But this was truly unlike any other. Harum produced lavender oil from her bag, which they took it in turns to waft under their noses.
‘It’s grotesque,’ she said, ‘it’s incredible.’ Nodding, he felt the first raindrops strike his brow. The shower fell suddenly, and hard, a deafening commotion slapping the leaves. They quickly set up camp downwind and took shelter, watching water collect in the bowl of the flower.
‘Now the rain in the jungle is one thing I do remember,’ Harum said, a slight edge to her voice. He could see she was upset, the tears on her face somehow distinguishable from the droplets around them, so he held her beneath the tarpaulin. It was almost too loud to hear what she whispered. They kissed again, properly this time, fully. It felt glorious and warm. For the time it lasted they could have been anywhere in the world and they would still have been alone. Afterwards they sat and listened to the forest.
‘Do you think about him?’ Harum said.
‘About who?’ Peter asked.
‘Hens.’
‘I think we should forget about Hens.’
Harum caught a droplet of rain, let it roll around her palm.
‘You think we can choose what we remember and what we forget?’ she asked.
‘I think, this time, we can.’
She slid her arms around his waist.
‘Will you stay here with me in Sumatra, Peter? Not forever. Just for a while, so I can visit family, see old friends.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Go to where my parents are buried.’
‘Whatever you need to do.’
‘Then I’ll come with you,’ she said, ‘to New York.’ He wound her necklace around his fingers, and bound them together. Two little birds.
Forty hours later the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. A clear sky poked through the canopy. From far away came animal hoots, cheering the change in the weather.
Harum shot six rolls of film, covering the corpse flower from every conceivable angle. It formed as comprehensive a study as he’d ever seen recorded. Peter sketched and soon they could no longer smell death. They were far too distracted by each other, as if it was they who had come into bloom. The long hike back passed as a pleasure. At their final camp they ma
de love. The days were hard but the nights were clear.
When they arrived home, Jayakatong was waiting. He was a tall man with long legs. A perfect circle of grey hair on his head looked like a coin secreted in the dense black.
‘Look at you, Peter!’ he said. ‘You’re so thin!’ Neither Harum nor Peter had noticed how much weight he’d lost on the trek. It had been ten days in total, and there were still rations left, but neither of them could remember feeling hungry.
‘Stop fussing, Jayakatong. Are you saying I am not?’ Harum said, rubbing the slight belly she had somehow retained. She ditched her rucksack at the foot of the steps. Jayakatong threw his arms around them both, apparently unfazed by how disgusting they seemed next to his clean, sweatless skin.
‘I am glad you’re back. I’ve had Asoka coming to my office every day to talk about the stupid corpse flower. She says you’ll bring a curse back to the town if you’re not careful.’
‘She’s a pain in the ass,’ Peter said. Jayakatong twisted in laughter.
‘Listen, Jay,’ Harum said. ‘I think that I . . . we are going to stay a little longer than expected. There are things I need to do, people I need to see.’
‘Of course, stay here as long as you like. As long as you tell Asoka to leave me alone. I have a busy police station to run.’
Peter paused as he approached the house, its door swinging on a gentle breeze that after the stultifying heat of the forest felt like goose feathers tickling his face.
‘Say, Jay . . . you don’t need a cleaner, do you?’
That evening Peter and Harum lay together, bodies bent to a mutual echo. Time’s relevance had ceased. Peter could rest. There was just the future, and this was its wonderful dawn.
Despite feeling nauseous again, Harum left to visit an aunt in South Sumatra the next morning. Peter felt the first pang of missing her the moment she walked through the door, but was thankful for having scant time to dwell. There was work to be done. He arrived at the address Jayakatong had written on the back of a torn airmail envelope, wondering how the police were meant to maintain order from a headquarters best suited to housing stray dogs. Entering the crumbling one-storey-high office building through a door comprised of a beaded curtain and a battered baby gate, he found the station consisted of five overcrowded desks. At the back was a solitary makeshift cell, its rear wall split into three by deep cracks. Jayakatong explained how his seniors had recently acquired the equally decrepit building next door, and offered Peter a small sum to clean out its basement in preparation for the extension. Peter agreed, ingratiating himself with the officers who assumed it to be an elaborate practical joke. An American, cleaning for a Sumatran cop? Ridiculous. Truth was, Peter felt excited to get his hands dirty, to be of use.
He took the keys and let himself into the building, provoking a brief riot from the roosting pests. The room was filthy, but nothing he wasn’t used to. He illuminated it with his torch, scattered spiders that had grown fat and lazy on their webs. The walls were a murky, unpleasant brown, the air stale. Suddenly visible at the back of the room was the door to the basement, and behind that a rotted wooden staircase. He descended through a foul stench that seemed to have deterred the rats.
At the bottom was a large windowless room, twice the size of the floor above. Fingering the bullet holes peppering the walls he found numerous false panels, each revealing a hidden cavity stashed with yellowed papers and books banned in the purge. A rusted safe obscured a secret door to another, smaller room. He wondered how many people had hidden here in fear of their lives. Whether they’d made it.
Peter removed his shirt and began to clear the space of objects: children’s toys, mouldy make-up, old clothes, unsmoked cigarettes; possessions grabbed in haste by desperate people. He heaved it all into bags, threw the bags outside on the street. After five days of heavy lifting the stack was high and the basement empty. The blood wasn’t easily coaxed from the wood. He tried cocktails of bleach and disinfectant, but nothing worked no matter how hard he scrubbed. With Jayakatong’s permission, he gutted the basement of floorboards, leaving only the essential cross-beams and stanchions. Depending on how long Harum wanted to stay, he’d try and see the work through to completion, even if it meant a crash course in carpentry. He stripped the walls, soaked the plaster, blasted the ceiling of stains with a jet washer.
Back in Brooklyn, in Queens, in Harlem, that had been the dirt of lonely people. The world had given up on them by forgetting they existed. But those who died here were only forgotten once they’d been denied the right to exist. Perhaps that’s why the grime stuck faster, why he almost wore his fingers down, scrubbing dried blood from the sills.
After three weeks’ hard work, the room was habitable again, even if its ghosts remained. He could hear them when he downed tools. Memories of them were ingrained in the walls, far deeper than could be cleaned. His back was sore, his shoulders knotted, but he was filled by a sense of achievement. Harum was due to arrive back that afternoon. He looked forward to seeing her, to discussing New York. They’d need to marry for her visa. The idea, which neither had yet floated, filled him with a joy so immense he could feel his pulse rush. And there was more. In their last phone conversation, she’d told him she had news, and that she wanted to be in front of him when she said it.
The door to the house was open, which was unusual. Whether in or out, they always remembered to at least close the mosquito screen. It was possible she’d had a long journey and forgotten. Or that Jayakatong’s wife, Merpati, had come by to launder the towels, which she’d insisted on doing in Harum’s absence. As though Peter didn’t know how to clean a towel. Whatever the reason, it still struck Peter as odd, as though the house had opened its mouth to reveal that a tooth had been punched out of its smile. Unless Harum hadn’t arrived yet and he’d accidentally left the door open when he’d left for work? This too was possible. He had woken late – one of many frequent power cuts in the area having reset his alarm – and remembered leaving in a hurry, his mind on other things, like the welcome-home meal he’d planned for the evening. He stopped at the bottom of the steps to remove his boots.
‘Harum?’ No answer. ‘Hello?’ It occurred to him that Harum might be in the small garden at the back of the property. He walked down the thin alley that separated them from the neighbours. She wasn’t there either, but he noticed that the back door was also open. This hadn’t happened before. He didn’t even know they had a key. Peering through the back window, hands hooped around his eyes, he called her name.
‘Harum?’ He didn’t want to shout. The neighbours had a newborn daughter. Last time he saw them they looked like they’d not slept since the turn of the century.
He slipped inside the back door. The kitchen tiles were sweating; water had been boiled recently, and he could smell jasmine, Harum’s favourite tea. The tap was dripping, which wasn’t unusual. He tightened it, succumbing to an act of futility. Within an hour that same drip drip drip would again be nudging him towards insanity.
That’s when he noticed a piece of paper on the floor, about the size of a postage stamp, then a bigger piece, by his foot. He knelt down to read the words scrawled on them and blushed. How had it taken so long to recognize the writing as his own? On the first piece were the words: Dear Susan. On the second: PS. I don’t think this will happen, but if you hear from Hens, just say you haven’t heard from me. It’s best that way. How had his letter got here? Why was it torn? Harum had promised him she’d mail it. He’d needed her help – the nuances of the Sumatran postal service were beyond his comprehension. And he distinctly remembered her telling him she’d done it while he’d searched for suntan lotion, before they met Asoka at the restaurant. Recalling it now, he could still feel how his skin had turned pink, though the day felt deceptively cool.
This was only the beginning of the trail. Ripped fragments of the letter were scattered across the hall, towards the door that opened out into the lounge, the one that was never closed. Until now. But it wouldn’
t open. There was something behind it, something heavy at the foot of it, that wouldn’t budge when he pushed. Something of its weight made him think of a tiger, and how if he managed to get into the room it would pounce and gore him, claw him to shreds.
‘Harum!’ A response, but muffled. His name through closed lips. He started to panic and rammed his shoulder into the door, again, and then again. Harder. Harder. On the fifth burst it moved just an inch, the tiger giving in, or rearing to strike. Again. Harder.
‘Harum!’
The door gave, toppling the chest of drawers propped behind it. He entered, and amid the mess, and the pieces of a letter to his sister, was Hens Berg.
Hens stood, slippery with sweat, his chest spread wide, over Harum, who was sitting in a chair and shivering. Peter looked at her, implicit in his eyes the question: Has he laid a finger on you? She shook her head. Not yet. But Peter’s arrival couldn’t have been timed any better. He’d seen Hens angry before. Over small things, usually, like women refusing to give him their number. But never like this. It was amplified. An anger that had compelled him to somehow find them, and then propelled him around the globe. But for what? To break into their house?
Peter struggled to stay focused. He saw them both only in details. Her hair. His hands. Her neck. His mouth. The light dimmed by the terror in her eyes. He looked back at Hens, his face contorted into a disgusting smile. Peter thought of the corpse flower.
‘Peter!’ Hens said. ‘How nice of you to show up.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Peter asked.
‘Visiting friends,’ Hens said. ‘That’s not a crime, is it? You are my friends, aren’t you? Harum? Weren’t we friends once?’
Her face. Peter hadn’t seen it like this before. A blankness to it, as though moved beyond feeling, to a different place.
‘Please, Hens,’ she said.
‘You don’t remember when we were friends?’
The Long Forgotten Page 19