by Tash Aw
“Am I going mad? May I remind you that you’re Roman Catholic—you aren’t supposed to believe in this nonsense.”
“As I said, it’s cultural.”
I knew it was hopeless arguing with him. Moreover, he is the most reasonable character in the house, and the others will be much more violent and nonsensical in their arguments; and so, with much reluctance, I have pencilled PROVISIONAL in brackets next to the sites marked X:FRANGPN. I fully intend to erase these unsightly parentheses once the fuss has died down and the Tree of Death has been engulfed by the senile forgetfulness of this place. Stealth is the only way to survive here, and I must have my frangipani.
In Penang, shortly after the war, I once stood on the windswept shores near the Snake Temple, looking out at the choppy waters. It was early in the evening but there was still a faint glow of light from the sea. I wandered down some broken stone steps that led from the winding hilltop road to the beach, picking my way through a thicket of trees. I stumbled and fell and lost my way. When, finally, I emerged in a clearing, I saw around me the slim, sinuous trunks of old frangipani trees. I looked around and realised that I had wandered into the ruins of a Muslim cemetery. I sat on the cracked, crumbling ramparts that encircled this burial ground and looked out to sea. The wind gusted gently and carried with it the thick scent of frangipani—sweet, heady, sad. I wept silently in the dark, letting the hot tears run down my face. I was not thinking of the war. I did not think of the three years I spent in prison in Changi—I had forgotten the beatings and the meals of watery rice porridge and the cigarettes made from rolled-up Japanese newspaper. I could barely recall the staring eyes and hollow cheeks of the men who died from dysentery and gangrene and sheer exhaustion. What were their names—Chapman? Le Fanu? Shepherd? I doubt I ever knew. I worked from sunrise to sundown and endured the torture as everyone else did, but that was not the end of it. I volunteered for extra work, taking the place of weakened compatriots. I surrendered my meagre rations to those dying of starvation. I did so willingly and refused to accept thanks. I spoke to no one; my suffering had already begun, and it was worse than anything the camp could inflict. The war was insufficient punishment for the things I had done; prison alone was not enough to expunge my sins. I barely felt the passing of those three years.
That was why I cried, sitting alone at the edge of the cemetery, infused with the scent of frangipani. I had not suffered enough; I had not atoned. Nothing could ever be enough.
I WAS SEIZED BY DESPAIR when I saw Johnny at work repairing the broken-down motor. There was something in the way his hands moved over each rusty bit of metal—cradling, cajoling, caressing—that suggested that salvation was imminent. We would soon be on our way, and the strange fleeting intimacy I shared with Snow the previous night would be lost forever.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Johnny?” I said when I found us alone for a moment. “It looks a frightfully complicated machine. You’re not just guessing, are you? We don’t want to land ourselves in more trouble.”
The pallor had lifted from his face and he seemed well again. His right shoulder lifted in a half-shrug and he returned to his work without speaking to me.
“I see, still in a mood. Fine. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care to know what’s wrong with you. I’ve stopped being concerned about your well-being. But I am concerned about my well-being and that of the others on this boat. All I ask of you is that you stop messing about with that machine and let Kunichika deal with it instead.”
He looked up, smirking with an ugly curled lip.
I said, “That doesn’t become you.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“I know,” he repeated, “that you’re still concerned about the well-being of the others on this boat.” His voice was mocking and hard.
“Look here, I’ve had enough of your nonsense,” I said, my face flushing with anger. “You’re a pathetic little child. Something troubles you—God only knows what, because you won’t talk about it—and you deal with it by being thoroughly uncommunicative for days on end, surfacing only to pour vitriol on the ones closest to you. Let me tell you this. If I don’t look out for you, who will? I know what Kunichika is up to—of course I do. I see it too.”
Again, that hard laugh. “You see nothing,” he said, and he returned to his work.
I left him and found a small triangle of shade cast by a stack of boxes. After a few minutes Kunichika sat down beside me. “Strange thing, the sea,” he said, sighing as if with exhaustion. He seemed friendly and gently comic, resigned to a long wait.
“Is it?”
“Yes, it has a peculiar effect on the minds of men. It affects their thinking.”
“Really—how interesting. And women? Does the sea do funny things to them too?”
“I would think so, but sadly I have not had the opportunity to observe many women at sea.”
“Well, here’s your chance to observe one at close quarters. A fine specimen, too, I’m sure you’ll agree. Not that there’s anything I could tell you about your new subject. Your students at the university will read your paper with the utmost interest, I’m sure.”
“What was all that about just now?” he said, his voice changing suddenly, becoming sharp and incisive.
“What?”
“You seemed to have had a very long discussion with Johnny.”
“Wasn’t much of a discussion, I assure you.”
“An argument, then.”
“I’m afraid to disappoint, but it wasn’t that either.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Ask him.”
He relaxed against the boxes once more, his body resuming its casual, weary posture. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to pry, I was just being inquisitive.”
“The strange effects of the sea, I expect.”
He smiled. “You’re good friends, aren’t you? I think you mean a lot to Johnny.”
“Good friends? Not particularly. Have you got a cigarette?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Why do friends argue?”
“The strange effects of the sea,” I repeated.
“Perhaps. We’re all very tired, I think.”
“Are we really going to find the Seven Maidens—or is this all going to end in disaster?”
“If we can get the boat moving, we’ll find them.”
“You seem very certain of that.”
“You seem unusually pessimistic, Peter.”
“Those maps of yours—I had a look at them. They’re very detailed, aren’t they? I didn’t think there were such maps of the Straits.”
“Those maps are all we have,” he said, rising to his feet. He stood over me, blotting out the sun. “Please don’t interfere with my things.”
HE WAS WRONG. We did not find the Seven Maidens, they found us. We sailed into their shallow crystal waters as if we were lured there, guided by the wind and the invisible current into those sheltered shores, whose calm façade disguised Pandemonium, the place of demons. The serpentine curves of the talcum-white beaches, the coyly swaying palms, and the soft, deep cladding of forest—how were we to know that these were the high capital of Satan and his peers? We had been succoured, it seemed. We ate, we slept, we washed the fiery brine from our souls. We set off again, hope and vigour renewed. We did not know that we were sailing on a burning lake; we thought that we had found paradise, but in truth we had already lost it.
IT WAS THE STORM, I suppose, that first made me believe I had been thrown headlong into a tropical Eden. It appeared in the distance, heavenly and portentous, sweeping majestically towards us. “Christ in Heaven,” I breathed, standing in awe before the advancing storm: lightning, racing in fissures across the sky; the exuberant feu de joie of thunder all around us. A frenzy of activity as we searched for life jackets, but we knew that there would be none. I stood with my face lifted to the sky, waiting for the waters from above to cleanse me. Snow ran across the deck, pushing past me. She paus
ed for a half-second and looked at me with shining eyes. She too knew that our moment was at hand. I did not shy from my destiny but faced it squarely, surrendering myself to it. I opened my lungs to the drowning rain and began to sing.
“Bloody madman!” I heard Honey scream. I remained where I was and did not seek shelter. A moment before the storm hit the boat, I felt myself pulled to the deck, the aria from Don Giovanni stifled in my throat. It was Johnny, holding me powerfully by the waist as he tried to drag us both towards the hatch that led down below deck, down to safety. He was too late.
I once saw a picture by Jacob Epstein, a delicate pen-and-watercolour study called We Two Boys Together Clinging. In it, two slender figures sway reedlike in the wind, their slim sexless bodies melding together to form a single arcing sinew set against the blue wash of the sky. The first time I saw it I stared so long, so intensely, at it that the sky turned to a pool of water. The figures began to swim before me, inviting me to join them; the water seemed so close, so real, that I could smell its cool moisture.
I clung to Johnny and he to me as we fell into the boiling sea. We did not struggle to keep afloat; we merely held tightly to each other. The thunder and crash of the storm dulled to a mere drone as we were engulfed by a wave and dragged into the warm depths of the water. Over and over we spun. The sky and the bottom of the ocean no longer seemed at odds; I could not tell where I was. I clung to Johnny and tried, O God I tried, to hold him close to me, my only friend and anchor in this world, but then he too was lost. I let myself be taken by the sea, but it did not want me. I was rejected, pushed to the surface, gasping as I blinked into the dazzling sky. My chest burned as I coughed brine from my lungs. The storm was passing, but the waves were still tall and angry. I kicked hard and felt the strength in my arms. I searched for Johnny but could not see him. I called and called and called but there was nothing. Over the swell of a wave I glimpsed Kunichika, swimming powerfully with his head above the water. I shouted for him but he did not pause. I struck out to find him and then, in a valley of waves, I saw Snow, her head struggling to break the surface of the water. I screamed her name, my voice ringing more loudly and clearly than I had ever known it. The sea bore me to her, each wave carrying me on its crest until I reached her. I swam easily; my chest expanded in song as I lifted her and eased her onto my back. “Don’t leave me,” she called out weakly. She put her arms around my neck and held tightly as I swam back to the boat; her face was pressed to my neck, and in my ear I heard her gasping whisper: “Why?”
I did not reply. How could I explain the strange workings of fate? I was meant to save her, to bear her over the waves on my own body. All the time I sang to her, my voice carrying over the flattening waves. Vieni, mio bel diletto. There was no reason, my treasure. This was simply the way we were meant to be.
A HEATED LITTLE DEBATE took place over dinner this evening. I unveiled the latest plan of the garden, complete with sketches of the various plants I intend to use. There was the usual bewildered lack of interest at first, but then Brother Rodney happened to walk past my table. “What funny-looking things you have there,” he said en passant, raising his voice and enunciating his words as if speaking to a deaf imbecile. “I don’t recognise any of them.”
I did not dignify this with a reply. After he had gone, Alvaro said, “I agree, Peter. Most of the plants aren’t familiar to us—perhaps you could use more ordinary things?”
Gecko and the others nodded in ignorant acquiescence. I struggled to contain my anger. For some weeks now, this endeavour has consumed every waking moment, and quite possibly every sleeping one too. “I do not believe,” I began calmly, “that you appreciate quite how much effort has gone into this garden. The reconstruction of a paradisical place requires imagination far beyond that which you lot could muster. It requires belief and passion and intellect—none of which you seem to possess.”
“Oh no, of course we appreciate your work,” Alvaro said, using his best placatory voice. “We were just thinking about the practicality of this arrangement. These plants all seem quite exotic to me—where are we going to get them from? Wouldn’t it be simpler to use ordinary native plants?”
I drew a deep breath and sat erect in my chair. “Native?” I said, my voice authoritative but kind. “Let me explain to you what ‘native’ means.” A great many of the plants that we commonly take to be native to the Malay archipelago were in fact brought here by early colonisers, I explained, trying to remain calm. Christopher Columbus was given a bristly cone-shaped fruit by the people of Guadeloupe when he visited them in the fifteenth century; it reminded the Spanish of pine cones, so they called it “piña”—yes, the pineapple, which now fills acre after shabby acre in the flatlands all around us. (Gasps of surprise and exclamations of “Are you sure? Did it really come from—what’s that place called again?”). More recently, in the late nineteenth century, Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree, came from Brazil via Kew and changed the fortunes of this tinpot little country. (Cries of “That’s not fair—we had other things besides rubber, you know, damn you Britishers.”). Oil palm from Africa, chillies from Mexico—what would our lives be without these exotics? Personally, I would be very glad never to eat another mouth-burning bird’s-eye chilli for the rest of my life, which, incidentally, I hope will not be very long; but I daresay that much of this country’s cuisine would become extinct if the chilli was eradicated from the menu. (Much head-shaking and general grumbling.) And as for flowers, well, where do we begin?
“Bougainvillea,” someone said, “that’s a nice flower—and definitely native. Why can’t we just have that on the verandah, instead of this—what is this thing?” He pulled my sketch toward him. “Passi-flo-ra.”
“Bougainvillea,” I said, stressing the French vowels. “Does it sound like a Malay name to you? Brought here from Brazil by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. So sorry to disappoint. Why should we have passionflower? Because it’s perfectly suited to this climate. It’s bolder than bougainvillea and doesn’t shed its petals like cheap confetti. And since we are, after all, living in a house run by the Church, I thought it fitting that we should have a flower that reminds us of the crown of thorns. Every time we take tea, we shall look at it and think of Christ’s suffering.”
Quiet, uncertain glances.
“Bunga raya,” Gecko said. “That’s our national flower, so you can’t goddam tell us that’s not native.”
“Most botanists think that particular strain of hibiscus originated from China, hence its common name, Chinese rose. No one knows for sure, though, but who cares? It looks like some strange half-evaginated hermaphrodite genitalia, gloriously labial, with a thin stamen that droops like a failed phallus—the whole thing desperately vulgar.”
Uproar.
“Okay okay okay,” Alvaro said, emollient as ever. “I’m sure Peter’s only joking. Aren’t you, Peter?”
“Of course,” I said. “I was only trying to illustrate a point.”
“And what was your point?”
I sighed. “That things thought of as native aren’t always what they seem, and that we shouldn’t be constrained by ideas of what belongs where. Some might say, for example, that since this is where I have lived for almost three-quarters of my life, I may be considered native.”
A deep silence fell over the table. I thought that perhaps finally I had won my battle. But then a chair scraped against the floor and an obese old troll stood up. Errol was his name; I had barely spoken to him in the past. “You are not native,” he said, his fat voice suffused with grease. “You just go fuck-off back home.”
As I left the room I heard Alvaro playing umpire amidst the melee. “Okay, okay, calm down,” he said as I walked along the darkened corridor back to my room, where I sat alone before the open shutters. The sea breeze had calmed and the air in the room was still. I lit a mosquito coil and placed it by my bed to keep the tiny winged vampires away. In the dark I could not see the flotsam that lay scattered on the grey, muddy sea. At night
only the light of fishing boats is visible on the purple-black waters, and the sea almost looks beautiful. I lay down on my bed, watching the jewelled specks of light on the faint horizon. I did not fall asleep for quite some time.
THERE WAS NOTHING this island could not offer us. The forest was rich with wild mango, custard apple, breadfruit, and coconut. Huge shoals of tiny silvery fish shimmered in the shallows; they did not swim away when we cast our net over them, but swum lazily in different directions, flashing iridescent in the sun.
“This place is very strange,” Johnny said. “It’s an island, but somehow doesn’t feel like an island.” We were out walking together, exploring the low shoulder of hills that rose above the sheltered bay in which we had camped.
“What on earth do you mean?” I laughed.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “The trees, the streams—everything seems perfect but wrong. It feels as if we could live here forever and yet . . . oh I don’t know.”
“I expect you’re still exhausted after the storm—and everything else,” I said. He looked better now, and his humour had improved immeasurably. He looked fit again, walking ahead of me on the cool, damp forest trails. His eyes were shadowed by dark circles of fatigue, it was true, but his limbs had recovered their litheness, and his stride was calm and steady.
“I don’t like the sea,” he said. “I can’t swim.”
“I can certainly testify to that.”
“Last thing I remember,” he said, turning to look at me with a faint smile, “you weren’t doing so well yourself.”
“Oh, the cheek of it!” I cried as we negotiated a slippery uphill path. “The cheek of it, the cheek of it. I was enjoying standing on the deck. Don’t you know the laws of physics don’t apply to me? I would have withstood anything that storm could have thrown at me. Like Idomeneo, I would have survived even if we had been shipwrecked. My catlike reflexes would have seen me through—but no, you came hurtling towards me, determined to spoil the moment.”