by Tash Aw
“If it were up to me,” I continued, “I would tear down the cow-shed, reposition the laundry room, remove the wire fence altogether, and divide the lawn into sections filled with flowering shrubs—an intricate, exquisite cloisonné pillbox of foliage. There would be sun, shade, and chairs. Water, fishponds. You could sit outside in the evenings and play chess with Gecko, next to a fern-shrouded pool, shimmering and damascene, alive with bejewelled Japanese carp.”
For a few moments, he looked pensive, but then suddenly he became frightfully animated.
“But of course but of course but of course. We could do it, man!” he cried.
“What on earth are you talking about, D’Souza?”
“We could rebuild the bloody garden from top to bottom, and there’s only one person who could do it. You!”
“Me?” I breathed. “Surely not me.”
“Of course. With you at the head of our team, who could refuse us? We would say, ‘Give us money. We have the kind services of the world-famous aesthete and connoisseur of dwellings, Peter Wormwood. ’ And they will gladly give it to us!”
Alvaro is the best of the bunch. His natural, hot-blooded enthusiasm is still evident. He must have been quite something in his younger days. Last week I watched him as he tried to change a light-bulb in his room. He placed one foot on the little wooden chair and spread his spindly arms out for balance before heaving up the rest of his body. He rocked back and forth, arms waving, like a Japanese crane in the final throes of its mating dance. Finally he gave up and hopped off the chair, which toppled behind him. I felt a sudden fluttering sensation in my chest as I watched him and knew instantly what would follow. I tried to suppress the horrible, familiar throb in my head by shutting my eyes tightly and listing the things I had had for breakfast that morning: cheap white bread (toasted), a slice of papaya, some rice porridge. Too late, too late. The memory forced its way back into my head, clear as day, as if it were being played out before me. As always, I felt as if I was watching myself in a Technicolour film. In an instant, I was on top of that hill again—I have forgotten its name, but I remember its shape, broad and irregular like an elephant’s head. Johnny is walking ahead of me, so quickly he is almost running. I am struggling to keep up. My shirt is damp with sweat, and beyond the scant shade of my hat the sun is white, mesmerising. By the time I reach the crest of the hill I see Johnny standing on a tree stump ahead of me. He balances on it, swaying gently from side to side, his arms outstretched on either side of him. Against the blue and limitless sky he stands a hundred feet tall. “Come on!” he yells, and I run towards him, my legs suddenly feeling strong again. When I reach him he lets me stand on the stump, gripping my hand to help my balance. The sight before me stretches wider and further than I ever believed my eyes could encompass. “This is it,” Johnny says. “My home, the Valley.”
CONFRONTED WITH THE MONUMENTAL TASK of introducing order into the garden, I decided the best course of action would be to start with my own quarters. If I could decide how I wanted the garden to look from my room, all the details would soon fall neatly into place. I tidied the drawers, arranging everything in little piles and throwing out the more unfashionable items of my wardrobe. “A house is a machine for living in,” Le Corbusier once said, and how right he was. I put my vests in the top drawer so that I can get to them easily before breakfast. And on the bottom shelf I put two shoeboxes filled with an assortment of objets trouvés accumulated through the years, including two crucifixes and a Padre-Pio-in-a-snowstorm paperweight given to me by Gecko down the corridor. He’s the one who can’t stand up straight because his rib cage collapsed last year. I’ve never been sure what his real name is. I think it’s something like Yap Peng Geck—something very up-country at any rate. I’ve always called him Gecko because he used to scuttle everywhere, just like a little rubbery lizard. His manner of speaking, too, is unfortunate: high-pitched and ejaculatory, entire sentences compressed into single trills. Whenever he sits at my end of the dinner table, the conversation around me suddenly becomes a bizarre symphony, a heavy hum of old men’s voices adorned with Gecko obbligato. But now, since his chest and spine gave way, it takes him forever to get anywhere. He shuffles dismally along the corridor, and yesterday I overheard someone saying that he might need his meals brought to him in his room.
In spite of his inability to walk unaided, he went to Italy last year. He bleated about it so much that the House organised a tour for him and a few others. They stayed with some Franciscans in a crumbling monastery on the outskirts of Rome. Two weeks doing the sights, paying homage to our spiritual masters. They even had a private audience with the Big Boss himself. How Gecko managed I’ll never know. One rather suspects it was a swan song of epic proportions. He’s always been the emotional type, and I can just imagine him being melodramatic and tearful at silly things—the first sight of Santa Maria Maggiore or the touch of the Holy Father’s hands. When he returned he came to me bearing a small package, neatly wrapped in heavy brown paper. “A Roman relic!” I cried as I tore through the wrapping. “I adore curiosa. What could it be? A miniature sarcophagus? Perhaps a replica of Nero’s lamprey?” I opened the box and stared at a glass globe which contained within it a small man wearing brown sackcloth and holding up red hands. Gecko took it from me and shook it so that the sad little snowflakes swirled around the tiny glassed-in landscape. He clasped my hands with his and said, “We are restless until we find our home.” He said it with a smile, to let me know he was happy.
“Thank you very much for my lovely present,” I said, decidedly marcato.
I kept it on my desk for some time, however, unable to consign it to the pile for the church fete. I have no explanation for this uncharacteristic lapse. I’ve never had a problem getting rid of things. I can leave anything, anyone, at the drop of a hat, so I can’t think why I still have that paperweight. But it’s been put away now, along with the crucifixes and the sacred heart. Everything has to be neat and tidy when I fade into the ether. Nothing should be left to clutter this room when I leave. Nothing is special. Not even Padre Pio.
I did mention that I’m trying to die, didn’t I?
Don’t be alarmed, it won’t be ghastly or dramatic—I hate the thought of blood. I’ve been hoarding pills, building my little kaleidoscopic collection in an empty Pond’s cold cream jar, waiting for the right time. I have planned it carefully, and it’ll be so beautifully choreographed that everyone will applaud when they carry my body out into the courtyard and then into the waiting Bentley. I have left instructions that the hearse should be a Bentley rather than a Rolls—a small concession to modesty—and that the driver should be dressed not in black but in starched white, the stiffer the better. And if the House were able to find someone decorative to wear such a uniform, I wouldn’t complain too much.
That would be a nice touch, I think.
BUT FIRST: I must must must set this garden down on paper, as I promised Alvaro and the others, even though their sad, shrivelled minds have probably forgotten my brilliant plan to replace the Abomination with something full of grace and love and life.
What spirit shall inspire this new Eden? The answer is obvious. Not the great gardens of England, but the ancient temple gardens of the Orient. Angkor, Sigiriya, Yogyakarta. I read about them before setting out on the journey East, gorging myself on descriptions of these fantastic monuments now reduced to jungle-shrouded ruins. It was a nineteenth-century lithograph of the entrance to a Javanese water garden that first fired my imagination. I stumbled across it in my college library, in a book someone had left on his desk. The pages fell open to reveal a perfectly formed arch of volcanic rock, crowned by a carved canopy of scrolling tropical foliage, which led my eye gently to a glass-flat pool of water beyond. On either side of this archway sat mythical beasts, and in the distance, beyond the water, stood a triumvirate of temples, tall and thin, with tiered roofs the shape of shallow umbrellas. In the middle of the pond there was a small island which supported two things, a shri
ne and a single frangipani tree. I learnt the name of this place: Cakranegara. The very sound of it quickened my pulse and made my eyes swim with visions of hot Eastern lands I never knew existed. I looked around the library and saw no one. I tore out the page and took it back to my room, where I pinned it to the wall next to my bed.
Thereafter I burnt for such images. Hungrily, I sought books on Angkor Wat and delighted in the sepia-tints of the ruined water gardens there. I spent the whole of my last summer in Oxford ensconced in the Bodleian, tucked away in its dustiest recesses. I read about the Summer Palace at Hué, the Fragrant City of central Vietnam, and in my mind’s eye rebuilt its gardens, filling them with courtyards of perfect proportions and earthenware pots. That summer was (as old men wistfully and embarrassingly recall) the last of its kind. I wandered in the Deer Park on my own and lay on the dry, sweet-smelling grass. I felt, in a desperately gauche undergraduate way, life about to change. My skin tingled constantly; I never slept.
One bright autumn afternoon, not long after I moved to London, I was strolling through Grosvenor Square when, through a window, I saw an opulent room decorated with faded panoramic wallpaper depicting temples and elephants and palms under a vast powder-blue sky. I recognised it at once as “Hindoustan,” made by Jean Zuber. I stood on the pavement in the chill of the gathering October wind, gazing into that colourful space. The room seemed to glow with warmth; the turbanned natives in their sampan wore only loincloths as they sweltered in the sun. I drew my coat tightly around me and walked away, through the scattering of dead autumnal leaves. I realised then that no picture could satisfy me. No matter how much I indulged my senses in libraries and museums I would still feel malnourished. I had fasted all my life, but now, at last, I was ready to feast. My entire being trembled with hunger, and I decided to leave England forever.
It is why I came here: this was where I would find my paradise, my tropical Arcadia, my vision of perfection.
I REMEMBER STEPPING OFF the ship at Singapore harbour, watching the sampans and tugboats bobbing gently in the bay. Smooth-skinned men and women sold fruit the colour of the sun and called to one another in birdlike intonations. The smells, too, were intoxicating. All around me the air had a curious odour of earth and caramel. What was it? Warmth. I had never known it to have a smell of its own, but it did. Perhaps I did not know the smell of warmth because I had never truly felt it before.
I did not stay long in Singapore. Everywhere I went, drunken, high-spirited troops rampaged through the streets. With their arms draped across one another’s shoulders, they sang “There’ll always be an England,” depressingly out of tune. I went to the Raffles Hotel a few times, but only because I was told that I might glimpse its Armenian owner waltzing with his guests whilst balancing a whisky-and-soda on his head. On one of my visits there, I was accosted by a plump, pink-cheeked man with thinning red hair. He held his tie between his fat fingers and waved it in my face. “Wormwood! Don’t you remember me?” he bellowed, and all heads turned to witness this tender reunion.
“No,” I replied—stiffly, I recall—and turned to converse with the bartender.
“It’s me—Lucy!” he cried.
“Lucy?”
“Yes, Bill. William Lucy. Parkside—remember? And then Oxford. I was at Brasenose and you were at . . . Magdalen, weren’t you? I didn’t bump into you much at Oxford.”
“I was in London most of the time.”
“What the devil brings you here? Last I heard, you’d moved to London to act in musical comedies. You aren’t here to entertain the troops, are you?”
I could sense the rest of the room straining to hear my reply: a new arrival in Singapore always aroused interest. I gulped at my gin-and-tonic. “No, you must have me confused with someone else,” I said. “I’m just passing through. Travelling. Thought I’d see the world before I settled down.” I looked him in the eye and smiled.
Thereafter I avoided the Raffles assiduously, and any tenuous associations with my compatriots quickly began to wither. I never saw the waltzing Armenian.
My Singapore was to be found in the alleys of Bugis Street and Chinatown, where shopkeepers recognised me and gave me cups of sweet coffee at three o’clock in the morning. All life—all real life—gathered there after dark, and strangers found solace in one another’s company. Merchants, prostitutes, and scholars moved as equals in this place. I would sit all night watching the va et vient of lascars and madmen; I was alone but never lonely. And it was here, at precisely eleven o’clock one evening, that I met Johnny.
He was sitting on his own in a corner of the coffee shop at the end of Cowan Street, diligently reading a book. It was a rare sight, a Chinese reading an English book in this part of town, so I took a table next to his and decided to engage him in conversation.
“Shelley?” I said with genuine surprise when I saw what he was reading.
He looked up as if confused.
“Have you read a lot of Shelley?” I asked again.
He looked at me blankly. I began to wonder if he understood me. I moved to his table, and as I sat down he lifted the book and placed it on his lap, as if hiding it from me.
I smiled. He was not, as my nanny would have said, an oil painting, but he had the silent, easy grace of a Balinese nobleman of the type depicted in lithographs of sumptuous palaces.
“You must be the only person in Singapore who reads Shelley,” I said.
When he smiled his face transformed into that of a child—radiant, innocent, happy. He said, “My wife speaks English.”
“You’re married. How wonderful.”
“I am improving my English,” he said, looking down at his book, “so that I can converse freely with her—and her family too.” His smile faded slowly and all of a sudden he looked sad and utterly defeated by the world.
Without thinking I said, “But English is such a rudimentary language. I will teach you everything you need to know.”
The smile returned and he was a child again. In a strain of halting English more mellifluous to my ears than Dryden’s, he told me about his wife and his home. He told me about his work, and as he did so opened his satchel to reveal a small piece of silk. It was at once iridescent and delicate, and shone with a colour no Occidental could ever have conceived.
“Clair de lune,” I breathed, reaching for it across the table.
He seemed perplexed, and watched me as I held it in my hands, allowing it to cascade from my fingers. It was shot through with so many strands of colour that every time it moved its appearance changed: moonlight, emeralds, and pearls all passed through my hands. This cold chameleon so transformed itself that I could scarcely believe it was the same piece of cloth.
“Take it,” Johnny said, appearing strangely unconcerned by the imminent loss of this treasure. He put his book in his satchel and finished his tea. He was leaving Singapore the next day; I did not know when I would see him again. I felt a sudden surge of panic. I wanted to hear more. I asked him to tell me about the Valley but he looked confused. He shrugged and said, “What is there to say?”
“Tell me everything,” I said, “everything.”
My lips trembled as I repeated the names of the towns in the Valley. As he spoke, a strange landscape reconstructed itself in my mind’s eye: I saw caves disappearing into jagged hills, the land dissolving into the sea; I saw a man swimming in a pool of coloured textiles and a woman, Snow, melting into the earth.
“It’s nothing special,” he said with a final shrug.
I reached for the piece of cloth and folded it tenderly before placing it in my pocket. I wanted to go to the Valley at once.
NOW, BORDERS. I have sketched out a plan on a large piece of paper showing where they should be. Although they follow a basic east-west scheme to avoid being shredded to ribbons by the prevailing winds, they are cleverly disguised by their languidly snaking shapes and differing masses, and do not therefore appear regimented in any way. One shudders at the thought of the harshness to be found in
the great French gardens—in Versailles, for example, the greatest of them all, where rows of trees are lined up like soldiers on parade. In spite of what the French would have us believe, I have always thought their gardens display a certain poverty of imagination, a failure of the romantic impulse.
My designs owe nothing to the tradition of those gardens the French think of as le jardin anglais, the grand visions of classical perfection at Stowe or Blenheim, for example. How distasteful that would be in a setting such as this. If anything, this will be a wild garden, a creation of seemingly casual beauty, whose charms are quiet, understated. Some of the borders are large and deep, others long and shallow; some are planted with tall shrubs, others with ground cover, many with a mixture of both. Heliconia share their beds with cannas, golden trumpets tumble into masses of wax ginger, bauhinia jostle for space with red hibiscus—bunga raya, the national flower. The result is quite breathtaking, a simply presented, richly flavoured taste of something sublime. Is the purpose of a flower bed not similar to that of a poem? Within their artificial boundaries, both contain a tiny world of beauty, a joyous compression of life.
I have put as much detail as possible into the sketch, indicating the approximate sizes of the borders and writing the names of the plants in their respective positions. I have told Alvaro that these details are NONNEGOTIABLE, and that if the Church gardeners decide to take liberties with the planting I shall destroy my sketch. “I am quite capable of it, I warn you,” I said as he pinned the sketch up on the notice board outside the dining hall. He did not seem to think this a problem. He merely smiled and shook his head, repeating “no” gently, over and over again, as if to calm a child. This incensed me and I stormed into my room, slamming the door for good measure. The creation of paradise is not something I take lightly.