by Tash Aw
I made my excuses and left as quickly as I could. I walked alone on the Beach of Passionate Love, watching the swell of the waves unfurling as they reached the shore. The sand was grey, not white; the tinge of amber was fading now in the darkening sky.
As I drove back south I knew that trip would be my last. I was ready to surrender to death, and hoped the end would be swift. How could I have known that, thirty years later, I would still be here, still waiting? It is a futile exercise, this contemplation of the end. My lungs still heave and my automaton limbs carry me downstairs to breakfast every morning, but the truth is that I died many years ago, suffocated by my own hands.
THE BOAT WAS CALLED the Puteri Bersiram, the name painted in small calligraphic letters barely visible on the rotting woodwork of the bow. As a means of initiating conversation with Johnny, I asked him what it meant. “The Bathing Princess,” he said brusquely, and he disappeared below deck. He had been sullen throughout the day; no amount of cajoling could coax him from his obdurate silence. During the drive, Snow had leant over to me and asked again if I knew what was wrong with Johnny. She whispered close to me and I felt her cool breath on my neck. Trembling, I lowered my head to her ear, and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of things.” She smiled and placed her hand briefly on my forearm. When I looked up at Johnny, I found him staring at me with a dark-eyed glare. He had the look of a man succumbing to an unnamed sickness. Malaise en Malaisie.
“Come on, Johnny,” I called down the hatch after him, “some sea air will do you a world of good.”
No answer.
“Please,” I said, “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but whatever it is, I’m sorry, alright? If you come up on deck with the rest of us I’ll do something to make it up to you.”
No answer for some time, and then a tentative frown took shape, the corners of his mouth curled in a half-smile.
“We’ll recite some Shelley together, how about that?” I said. “Come on, it’s the start of our adventure!”
As we sliced effortlessly through glass-green waters, I watched Snow and Kunichika standing side by side at the helm, their sleeves touching and fluttering in the wind. They were like figures in a bas-relief, hewn onto the side of an ancient monument, perfectly postured and inscrutably countenanced. Johnny and I sat down on the deck and watched the deepening sun. We rested our heads on the splintered boards of the shack that housed the helm. I was heartened to see that a little colour had returned to Johnny’s cheeks, but his eyes remained hollow and distant as we sat gazing into the sun. I touched his arm to enquire as to his condition, but he withdrew from me and smiled weakly. The long painful strains of Kunichika’s “Porgi, amor” began to play in my head, and there was nothing I could do to make them disappear. The boat emerged from the sheltered inlets and suddenly we were in open waters, the sea supine before us.
Johnny said, “ ‘And many there were hurt by that strong boy. His name, they said, was Pleasure.’ ” He mumbled rather than articulated the words, but they were clear enough to me.
“Is that Shelley?” I said. “How clever of you to remember it. What’s it from?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just saw it in the book.” He avoided my gaze, staring at the setting sun with indolent eyes. The wind disturbed his hair, ruffling the short, fine strands into a jagged mass that sat up on his head like a crown. Some of them fell down over his forehead; I reached across to brush them from his eyes, but he pushed my hand away with a small slap—I could not tell if the force of this blow was intentional. For a brief moment, my fingertips had touched his brow—it was hot and clammy.
“I see. Noli me tangere,” I said. “I suppose you’re waiting to ascend to a higher plane? Tell me what’s wrong, for God’s sake.”
He laughed a quick, snorting laugh, quite unlike him, and continued looking sleepily into the distance.
I sneaked a glance at Snow and Kunichika, that perfect lascivious pair, and saw them still entranced with each other. “Listen, Johnny,” I whispered. “I know what’s the matter. It’s Kunichika, isn’t it?”
He turned to me at once, regarding me with a frown of genuine surprise. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy.
“It isn’t right,” I continued. “I know it isn’t right, and it must be uncomfortable for you, but it’ll pass, I’m sure. It’s the novelty of him—I mean, the novelty of someone new appearing all of a sudden. We’re all like that, after all. People who enter our worlds from the outside are always more fascinating than the ones close to us, but in the end we always see sense. There’s no need to worry, you know.”
He looked confused.
“Snow,” I said, lowering my voice even further. “She isn’t behaving, well, quite herself, is she?”
His face twisted in an ugly smile. He said, “How would you know what her self is?” And with that he returned to his barricaded silence, locking me out of his world. The unfathomable, inscrutable East, I thought. I was cut adrift from the shores of understanding. The sea spread itself before me, leading to a blank, blank horizon. There was nothing I could do but sing. I opened my voice to the marbled sky. The songs I sang were the ones I thought I had forgotten: Drink to me only with thine eyes, I intoned in the last light of the tropical afternoon. They were the songs of my boyhood, and I had scarcely sung them in the years since. Still I carried them with me, alone here on these hot seas.
It did not surprise me when the boat broke down. It began with a grinding roar, the motor complaining of its age and disrepair with the most awful rattle. And then it gave way abruptly to a thin protesting whine before quietening completely. I welcomed it with glee.
Before this fortuitous intervention, I had gathered myself for sleep, nestling against some boxes and pulling a thin blanket around me. I kept to the shadows, shying from the moonlight that drenched the boat with thrilling whiteness. So bright was the moon that it painted out the stars with its silver-hued wash; I could not bear to look at the sky. I rested my head on the deck, allowing the rumble of the machinery to lull me to sleep. The intricacy of this mechanised heartbeat surprised me. It pulsed steadily, rising and falling with all the rhythms of a sentient existence; it spoke with a voice, mumbling now, singing then. Its vocabulary was primitive but articulate nonetheless. With my ear pressed to the cracked boards I could hear everything—Honey’s clumping footsteps settling down at last; Kunichika’s measured movements at the helm; and directly beneath me, the uncomfortable creaking of Snow’s wooden bed. Only Johnny was not in communion with this silent congregation. The noises abated after a while, but I knew the silence would not last. It was uneasy and tremulous, and when it was broken I was not surprised. I heard footsteps move slowly from below deck, emerging not far from where I lay. I knew they belonged to Snow, of course, and I knew they would carry her to the helm. I feigned sleep until she had passed, and then dragged myself very slowly across the deck until I had a view of the helm. The shuffling and scraping of my clothes on the rough wood rang terribly in my ears. I stopped and lay utterly still for a moment, waiting for the fragile silence to settle over the boat once more. I lifted my head and saw Snow standing very close to Kunichika; though their bodies did not touch, there existed an ugly complicity between them. I wanted to rush at them, screaming, and tear them apart. And then, in a single movement so fluid my eyes could barely discern what had happened, they were standing as one, pressed tightly together. His arm held her tightly around her waist, drawing her close to his side. I closed my eyes and waited for that dreadful sight to pass. When I opened my eyes again, I thought, they would surely be apart—but every time I did so I saw them clinging to each other like survivors on a raft, detached from the rest of humankind. I let my head fall to the deck, pressing my ear to the comforting, rudimentary throb of the motor. I could hear the waves washing against the side of the boat; the fathomless depth of the sea suggested a noise of its own: a howl wrung dry of sound so that only its resonance remained.
Not long after Snow�
��s footsteps padded softly past my prone, shivering body, I sensed the first tremors in the motor. A faint ticking which erupted into a ferocious roar, calming to a shuddering halt. Silence, everywhere. Honey was instantly roused from his sleep; he spoke to Kunichika in hushed, angry tones. When I approached them, Kunichika was standing at the side of the boat, peering into the inky depths of the water.
“Don’t worry,” he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt as he prepared to dive overboard. “It’s only a small thing, I’m sure.”
WE DRIFTED PLACIDLY on the windless sea, so slowly I could barely discern the boat’s gentle pirouettes. The flat and unbroken surface of the water spread silently around us; the empty horizon offered us no hope. The absence of gulls was strange, Kunichika said: we couldn’t have been far from land. The truth was that we might have been two miles or two thousand miles from our destination and we would not have known.
Night brought relief from the scorching intensity of the sun. “It also brings out the beast that lurks within every man,” I said to Snow. “Witness.” I motioned at Kunichika, who was attempting to repair the boat. He tore at the machinery as if butchering a carcass. Sometimes he used tools, often he used his bare hands. When finally he gave up and sat down with his maps, the light from his lamp lit his grease-streaked face. “He looks like an animal, one of those fox things—the ones people say are incarnations of ghosts,” I said.
“You mean a civet cat,” she replied.
“That’s the one.” I searched the darkness for signs of light.
“Peter,” Snow said, lowering her voice. She placed her hand on my forearm. “I’m worried. About Johnny.”
My arm tensed sharply at her unexpected touch, and I pulled away involuntarily for a brief moment before allowing her hand to settle once more. “Really?” I said, continuing to peer into the dark. “It’s only seasickness, I expect.”
“Come on, Peter,” she said, her fingers gripping my arm. “You know as well as I do that his fever has nothing to do with his body.”
“Hasn’t it? I honestly can’t see what else it might be if it isn’t seasickness. Perhaps homesickness?”
She turned to look at me, but still I looked into the infinite night. “He hasn’t got a home—how can he be homesick? You know him better than anyone, I think, even better than I do. You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?”
“We’ve become good friends, I suppose.”
“You mean a lot to him, you know.”
“Do I? Can’t think why.”
“If anything happens”—she stopped and laughed a gentle, snorting laugh—“if anything happens to me, to us, you’d look out for Johnny, wouldn’t you?”
It was a murky night, the moon a dab of white on the black paper sky. I said, “Yes, of course.”
She fell silent.
“Of course I would,” I said, in a lighthearted voice, “if anything happened. I mean, we’re a long way from the war, and who knows—it might never get to the Valley. In any case I doubt very much I’ll be in a better position than you if we are invaded.”
“I don’t just mean the war,” she said quietly.
“What, then?”
“I don’t know—everything. I wish I could tell you about Johnny. I wish you could know everything, Peter.” She drew her hand away, and instantly I wished she would touch me again.
“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”
“Just promise you’ll help. Do it blindly, don’t ask why or when or anything else. Just think of Johnny, and promise.”
And so I did. I promised.
Honey’s whisky-saturated body lay nearby. He had been snoring fitfully and now he began to mumble incoherently in the surly tones of a schoolboy. His legs kicked out and his fists jerked violently; his voice became compressed, prepubescent, demanding. I felt laughter well from within me, dancing from my stomach to my throat, and I could not stop. Snow began to laugh too, her shoulders shaking. It was only when I had stopped to draw breath that I realised she was no longer laughing but crying. I did not know what to do—my hands reached out to touch her, but I drew back. I wanted to gather her in my arms, to tell her that everything would be fine, that we’d soon be home, and don’t be surprised if we end up having a wonderful holiday and come back with some bloody good stories to boot, now wouldn’t that be fun? Instead I put one hand timidly on her hair, afraid of frightening her from me. She wept without covering her face. She held her head high and looked me in the eye, strong and proud and beautiful. And I—I only watched her, tentatively pawing at her hair until she got up and left me alone on the tar-black sea.
I promise I promise I promise. It came de profundis and instinctively, just as she said, and with all the certainty in the world.
But I was not thinking of Johnny.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA is said to have attained Enlightenment whilst sitting under the distinctive heart-shaped leaves of the bodhi tree, Ficus religiosa, whose gently spreading boughs and short, gnarled trunk make for an especially attractive garden specimen. Nearly every Buddhist temple has F. religiosa planted somewhere in its grounds; one in Amarapura in Burma is said be two thousand years old. During my travels in Siam in the fifties I made a point of sitting under every such tree I happened upon. I would make offerings of prayer in the temples I visited; I would then search out the ficus and settle in its shade, forcing my limbs into a cross-legged sitting position (the true “lotus” was, I’m afraid, quite beyond the capabilities of my overly long Occidental limbs). A period of meditation would follow, my mind emptying itself of its accumulated corruption in the serenity of the temple grounds. Mind and spirit cleansed, I would venture out into the streets to pollute myself again, knowing that another temple and its bodhi tree would not be far away. There is certainly something in the properties of that particular type of fig tree that lends itself to quiet contemplation.
I have tried sitting under various trees of that genus—the banyan tree, F. benghalensis, for example, a spectacular colossus that dominates roadsides and riverbanks alike here in Southeast Asia. Its aerial roots droop from its branches, sturdy as rope and strong enough for a small child to swing on. I once watched children in a village along the River Perak play all afternoon in precisely this manner, swinging from banyan vines that hung over the water and splashing into the treacly river. Though I sat cross-legged under the tree, I could not settle: it did not cast its spell over me. The massive trunk is said to be the dwelling place of spirits, and I have often seen propitiatory offerings of fruit and flowers placed near it by pantheistic (well, superstitious) villagers, and yet it does not engender the calm that Buddha’s fig tree does. It is too big and impersonal, a child’s playground rather than an altar to the human spirit. No, the Buddha chose wisely. He knew his trees, and I shall follow suit. I have marked out a spot for a bodhi tree in the far corner of the garden, away from all other plants and structures. I have sketched it into my plan, and I must say it looks rather splendid.
For scent, I will have another of my sentimental favourites: frangipani, or what the locals call cempaka. Nothing rivals the fragrance of the tropical garden. The smells of an English garden after a light June rain shower seem tragically reticent compared to the seductive perfumes of a single tropical flower such as the frangipani. Many times in the past I have found myself strolling in the evening and catching the first scents of this flower, released by the onset of darkness, when its odour is most compelling. I have marked it on my plan, dotted around the garden in sites where I think its balletic shape will be admired as much as its scent—next to the verandah where we sometimes take high tea, for example (imagine the smell of frangipani mingling with that of buttered toast and dry beef curry! O the champak odours, sweet thoughts in dreams!), or next to the proposed fishpond. I knew, of course, that having frangipani in the garden would not be popular with the other residents. “Cempaka?” Alvaro said, a frown of deep anxiety disturbing his normally placid sandstone features. “We really can’t have that here.”
; “Why on earth not?” I said, knowing what the answer would be.
“It’s the tree of death,” he said. “Muslims plant it in their cemeteries.”
“Superstitious claptrap,” I said. “This country is riddled with it. I’m surprised you of all people indulge in it, D’Souza.”
“It’s not superstition,” he said earnestly, “it’s just—well, no one will like it. For whatever reason, they won’t like it.”
“Rubbish. The Siamese at least have a decent excuse for not wanting it in their back gardens. Their word for cempaka is virtually the same as that for ‘sadness.’ But that doesn’t stop them from planting it in monastery and temple gardens. The monks are above superstition. If it’s good enough for devout Buddhists, then it’s good enough for a bunch of ageing papists like us.”
“This is a Muslim country. If Muslims wouldn’t do it, then I don’t think we should either.”