by Tash Aw
“No,” I said, gathering my sketches and notebooks. “If you haven’t already understood my philosophy, a lengthy exegesis is unlikely to provide further illumination. The bottom line is: no birdbath.”
I retired to my room, where I paused briefly to reflect on—and, I must admit, admire—the strength of my resolve. I felt absolutely justified in standing firm on the matter. Although harmony with nature is of considerable importance in planning a garden, it must never be allowed to obscure what lies at the heart of the design: the salvation of the human spirit. In creating a garden, we acquire, by force, a patch of land from the jungle; we mould it so that it becomes an oasis amidst the wilderness. It is an endless struggle. Turn our backs for a moment and the darkness of the forest begins its insidious invasion of our tiny haven. The plants that we insert—artificially, it must be noted, for no garden is a work of Mother Nature—must not only provide shelter for the soul, they must be able to absorb and then disperse the creeping darkness of the jungle around us. The decorations do not merely adorn, they protect. They create a place where, at the end of our lives, we may find peace.
And no peace will ever be found amidst those infuriating little birds.
THOSE WHO TRULY KNOW the jungle do not invite it into their homes. They fight to keep it from their dwelling places, fiercely patrolling the boundaries; they understand that the threat from the denizens of the tangled forest is constant. The jungle is alive and it is dangerous. This was one of the very first things I learnt when I came to the Valley, when Johnny took me on a walk across the Cameron Highlands. Since our reacquaintance in Kampar, he seemed exceedingly keen to show me the Valley, and we had been on several long walks already. Each time the drill would be the same: Johnny would appear at my guest house, where he would be greeted by the towkay with considerable enthusiasm (from my room, I could hear Johnny’s polite, protracted refusals to join the family for tea); he would then appear at my door, wearing a smile of undimmed delight. Always, he held a book, and although the choice of reading material sometimes changed, he clearly had his favourites. Shelley, as I have explained, was one—“shows impeccable taste,” I told him—and Dornford Yates another. Our conversation on those first walks was always the same. He asked the questions, I answered them.
“What is the meaning of ‘expostulation’?” “Who was Ozymandias, actually?” “Was Hamlet really crazy?” “What is the difference between ‘toilet’ and ‘lavatory’?”
He drank my answers as if quenching an ancient thirst. They were all that he needed to sustain himself on these walks, it seemed. He never drank from the flask of boiled water we carried with us; all he wanted to do was ask and listen. He was inexhaustible.
This particular walk in the high, cool hills above Tanah Rata was the longest yet: seventeen miles, Johnny said, all the way through the Camerons, up to the peak of Beremban, taking in Robinson Falls. The prospect of an entire day treading through the prehistoric jungles of the Valley filled me with such naked joy that for the first few miles I easily kept up with Johnny. We walked along undulating paths that ran along the bottom of steep slopes clad with tea hedges. The bright green of these bushes blanketed the valleys so thickly that I almost believed I could plunge into it and not be hurt. Beyond these low-lying slopes rose the spine of the hills, huge and silent, covered in ancient rainforest. The morning sun fell on every undulation: a softly bronzed valley painted with zebra-striped shadows.
The nature of our conversation up to that point was entirely predictable.
“Why do people in England have to change into special clothes for dinner?” Johnny asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you wear a ‘black tie,’ ” he said. “What is that?” I noticed that in the jungle he spoke freely, and without the hesitation that made his English seem stilted and primitive in Kampar.
“My dear boy,” I replied, “I fear you have been paying too much attention to Dornford Yates.”
“So you don’t wear a black tie, then?” he said. A look of mild disappointment settled on his face.
“Of course I do,” I said quickly. I cannot fully explain the fabrication that followed. I can only say that I wanted desperately for the smile to return to Johnny’s face, for him to be thrilled and mystified once more. And so I continued: “I am famous for my sartorial sensibilities. I have even been known to dress for dinner when I am at home on my own! Did you know, a great ballet dancer once said that he wished his shirts were as elegant as mine. He saw me in a restaurant and crossed the room to pay me that compliment. The next day I selected a few of my less-favoured shirts—made by Charvet in Paris—and had them sent round to his dressing room. I daresay he was mightily pleased with them.”
He smiled broadly and turned to look at me with his all-absorbing eyes. “Really?” he breathed. “What was this person’s name?”
“Nijinsky,” I said without hesitation, knowing he would not know any better.
He continued picking his way through the trees, negotiating tree roots and fallen logs as easily as I might have strolled through St. James’s Park on a summer’s day.
“In fact,” I continued, “I have not one but two dinner jackets with me back at the guest house. It’s one of my rules of travel: never be underdressed. I was thinking, though, that perhaps you should have one of them. A man should always be appropriately attired, after all.”
He looked shocked at first, uncomprehending. I made my offer again, and he accepted it with a silent smile. Thereafter he began to fire questions rapidly, speaking with a looseness I had never before seen in an adult. This had a curious effect on me. My answers became more and more elaborate, happily gilded with stories from a glittering past I never knew I had. He seemed to draw energy from these tales, laughing loudly whilst striding powerfully ahead of me. I tried hard to keep up, but the effort of explaining, inter alia, Jacob’s Ladder and the devotion of Mary Magdalene was too much for me, and my breath became truncated and painful. We stopped in a glade by a shallow valley filled with rhododendrons. My vision swam with multicoloured shapes.
“Rest awhile,” Johnny said. He poured some water onto a small piece of cloth and offered it to me. I placed it on my neck and caught my breath. The landscape around us seemed bizarre in its variety. Part tropical, part temperate, wholly perplexing. All manner of epiphytes clung to the trees: bird’s-nest ferns, many-headed orchids, twisting vines with flowers the colour of hot coals. We were in the heart of the forest now, tiny creatures dwarfed by the towering columns around us.
“What’s that tree called?” I asked, pointing.
He shrugged.
“That one?” I asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“That one’s teak,” I said.
“We call it jati,” he said.
I walked to the edge of the clearing, listening to the cries of hawks.
“Jati is what we use to build houses,” he said.
“Isn’t your house made from teak?”
He laughed. “That is my father-in-law’s house—but yes, it is teak. Someday I too will own a house made from teak.”
“Was your shop made from teak?” I said, continuing to gaze at the thick canopy of leaves above me.
He laughed suddenly, a different laugh this time. It sounded cold and sad. “My shop was destroyed. By fire. And now I live in the house of my wife’s father.”
I had just begun to turn to look at Johnny when I felt something on my shoulder. Just for an instant: a blunt thud accompanied by a sharp, pricking pain in my neck. Johnny’s eyes widened and he ran towards some bushes, picking up a long stick as he did so. In a single fluid movement he brought the stick down hard into the earth; he lifted his arm again and repeated this several times until finally I saw that he had killed a snake. A small one, dull green in colour. Its bloodied body hung limply over the stick. My neck began to throb gently. Johnny came to me and said, “I thought it was a viper, but it’s not. This snake is only slightly poisonous.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll be fine. It didn’t bite you properly.” He came very close to me and held my neck. I could not see what he was doing. I could barely feel the flick of his knife on my skin as he made a tiny incision. He squeezed the cut so gently I could not feel anything apart from a spreading warmth on my neck; and then he wet a thin towel with some water from the flask and pressed it to my numbed skin.
“We should go,” he said.
We walked slowly, descending once more into the foothills. The early sunlight had given way to mist, which settled thickly in the tea valleys. The air I breathed was so densely humid that I felt I was drinking it. The path disappeared under my feet. I could hardly see where I was stepping. Only a blind trust in Johnny’s judgement kept me going, and I stumbled along in his wake, desperately following the blurred outline of his body ahead of me. “Look,” Johnny said, pointing to the sky. A hawk wheeled over the valley, vanishing into the mist. Several times it did this, falling from the cloud in a slow, tilting arc above our heads before disappearing once more into the ether. I could not keep track of its movements; I did not know if I could trust my eyes.
It was not an ideal introduction to Johnny’s home. Many times before, I had imagined myself arriving dressed in perfectly pressed clothes and a fetchingly elegant cravat: witty, engaging, and adored. Instead, I found myself staggering up the stairs to the verandah at the front of the house, holding a blood-streaked cloth to my neck. My legs began to buckle and I felt a burning sensation at the back of my throat.
“Water,” I heard Johnny call.
All this time, I was acutely aware of how ridiculous I must have looked. I saw various people pass before me, and I wanted to explain to them that this was a ghastly aberration. My behaviour is entirely inexplicable, I wanted to say; and as for attire, well—I had been caught unawares; no one had told me I would be invited here. And yet, curiously, I could not speak. My throat had seized up and I found it difficult to articulate even the simplest words.
“Calm, calm,” Johnny repeated.
I’m not certain how long my embarrassing little turn lasted, but slowly I began to regain my composure. My breathing became more even, and when I coughed I felt my voice vibrate once more at the back of my throat.
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said, looking around. “You must think I’m terribly vulgar.” I stood up and offered my hand in greeting to the people now assembled: a frail, frightening old man, whom I recognised instantly as the one saved by Johnny from the fire; an equally stern-faced woman with grey-black hair piled in a thick bun; and finally a timid girl, a maid of some sort, who stood tentatively behind an enormous rosewood armchair.
“You have been bitten by a snake, I hear,” the old man said, without offering a handshake. I didn’t know what to do with my still-outstretched hand.
“This is not surprising,” his wife said. “Ever since Johnny came here we have seen many snakes. Cobras. Even in the house.” When she said “Johnny” she seemed to spit the word, as if getting rid of an unpleasant and unexpected piece of food from her mouth.
Johnny stood in silence, his head hung as though in shame.
“What do you mean?” I said. “Johnny had nothing to do with it.”
The woman laughed, looking at me as if I were a recalcitrant child. “This man comes from out there,” she said, waving her hand. She spoke in the tones of a tired schoolteacher. “The jungle is part of him. It follows him everywhere.”
“It is everywhere,” I said.
“Not in our house.”
Johnny spoke quietly. “It’s the hot season. The snakes are following food and water. There is plenty of that here.”
“No, they are following you,” the woman said, casting a sideways look at Johnny.
“Mother, you exaggerate,” a voice called. “There have only been two snakes in the house all year, and one of them was a mere baby.” I looked up and saw a woman walking towards us, emerging from the shadows of the house.
After all these years I can still see her walking barefoot on the polished hardwood floors. Time has fixed her image in my head, and now, half a century hence, I tell myself, with great certainty and little embarrassment, that my pulse quickened rapidly on first seeing her. But is this really true? If I stop for a moment and close my eyes—as I sometimes do, just before drifting slowly into my geriatric’s nap at two o’clock every afternoon—I am able to transport myself back to that precise moment in time. Not for long, though: the sensation is fleeting, and I cannot hold on to it. I am in the cavernous sitting room at the house of T. K. and Patti Soong, on the outskirts of Kampar, at half-past-five in the afternoon on 31 August 1941. When this woman—this person—walks into the room, am I certain it is a woman? The truth is that I am not. At this moment, I am somewhat lightheaded but otherwise perfectly compos mentis. I see everything with utter lucidity, but somehow there is a disconnection between my brain and my eyes: I behold what stands before me, but I cannot compute what I see. I know she is a woman, but her body has the straight lines of an adolescent boy, flat-chested and slim. She is taller than any woman I have seen in the Orient; her face is almost level with my collarbone. When, some months after this first moment, I hold her to me, I find I can rest my chin on the top of her head, and I will remark that nothing has ever felt so comfortable, so right. But that comes later, after I knew that I loved her—yes, that too is a word I can now utter with alacrity. At that first meeting, however, I feel nothing but a spreading numbness. The delicacy of her complexion is cut, savagely, by the lines of her cheekbones. Her eyes are dark as agate. Still I cannot respond. The room feels airless around me. The gorgeous breathlessness and thrilling pulse—those are sensations that the years have layered on top of the initial emptiness, like sheet after sheet of silk covering a bare table. More than fifty years later I can see only the cloth; the table has been obscured.
Nightly, I pray for that blankness, that fragile tabula rasa, to return. I try to hold on to that moment when I had not yet loved her, when I stood before her a clean, innocent man. There I go again. Innocent? I was never innocent, nor even clean. Traces of poison ran through my blood that afternoon, as they have from the day I was born. I should have known that soon my bitterness would seep into her world and rot it slowly to the core.
“You’re hurt,” she says. Her first words to me. She walks towards me, and it feels as if hers is the only movement in the room. The others are perfectly still; it is only Snow who moves amidst this curious tableau vivant. She leads me by the hand across the floor, and I become aware of the darkness of the rafters above us. At both sides of the house there are tall shuttered windows that allow a breath of wind to stir the air in the house. Mother-of-pearl shines luminescent from the chairs and tables as I go past them into the kitchen. Snow—I know it is she, despite the fact that we have not been introduced—pours hot water from a flask into a large porcelain cup. She brings this to me; I see tea leaves unfurling, slowly sinking to the bottom of the crackled base of the cup. She puts one hand on my forehead, and then pulls at the skin below my eyes—what she is searching for I do not know.
“Did Johnny see the snake?” she says.
I nod.
“Then you should recover in a short while. It doesn’t look serious.” She smiles and leaves me with my cup of tea. I drink the tea, finding it pleasantly hot at the back of my throat. When I finish, I press the bulbous curves of the empty cup to my swollen neck, feeling its warmth creep over my skin.
Of course the poison soon wore off, and my limbs regained sufficient strength for me to cycle back to my lodgings. Johnny accompanied me, cycling beside me in the murky darkness.
“I hate them,” he said quietly.
“I know,” I said.
“All of them.”
“They’re not the easiest people to be with, I must say.” I raised my voice into a laugh, but it elicited
no response.
“If I can just be alone with my wife, everything will be fine.”
I could think of no reply to this—nothing that would not sound false.
As we approached the guest house Johnny stopped cycling. “Peter,” he said, looking at me; he wore a crumpled-up expression of such seriousness that I began to laugh. “I have a secret to tell you.”
WHEN I WAS IN MY TEENS, I was once taken on holiday to France by the sympathetic family of a school friend. One day we walked from Compiègne to Pierrefonds, sans parents, strolling blithely through the Royal Forest. It was May, but the infant summer was already ferocious in its aridity, and the fallen branches snapped easily when we stepped on them. I was in one of my Italian phases, I recall, having recently been introduced to Mozart’s glorious Da Ponte operas by a pederastic housemaster who was, the other boys tittered, “sweet on me” (nota bene: that is another story, to be ignored for the present). I began to devise a kind of pidgin Franco-Italian throughout this walk, delighting in my friend’s growing irritation as we tramped merrily along sous les alberi.
“It’s a bloody desecration,” he said. Pritchard was his name; he was an earnest boy. “The purpose of a holiday in France is to imbibe its culture and its language,” he continued. “You don’t take anything seriously, Wormwood.”
I was humming the tune to “Voi che sapete,” squeezing my larynx to make as high-pitched a squeal as possible.
“That’s horrible,” Pritchard said. “Stop it.”
“Tremo senza le vouloir,” I replied, falsetto.
We argued briefly about our route. He wanted to make a detour to the village of Rethondes, to visit the place where the terms of the armistice were presented to the “defeated Hun” in 1918. I, on the other hand, wanted to press on towards the wonderful fairy-tale château in Pierrefonds. In the end, after halfhearted demurrals, I conceded and allowed him to lead me to the Clairière de l’Armistice. I was about to continue with my singing when I saw, dead ahead of me, a vast carpet of lily of the valley spread out on the forest floor, sprinkled with faint pearls of dappled light filtering through the trees. In this hot dry weather, it was the only plant that had survived in the dense shade. I stood perfectly still, drinking of this magnificent sight. It made me think of the woods near Hemscott, my poor dilapidated home. It was enough to make my lip tremble, I am ashamed to admit. I stood gazing at this shaded field of lily of the valley, unable to move, whilst Pritchard marched blindly into them, trampling the tiny plants underfoot. He continued his quiet diatribe against frivolity, accusing me of not having properly appreciated the lessons and sacrifices of the Great War; I did not understand what dangerous times we lived in, he said. Silently, I wiped the moistness from my eyes and followed him, tracing his path through the crushed foliage.