by Tash Aw
“Sorry.” He laughed. “You were whimpering like a madman. What was I supposed to think?”
“I wasn’t whimpering, my dear boy, I was singing.”
“Sounded like whimpering to me.” As he turned to look at me he stumbled on a small rock; his foot scraped a long angry scar on the mud as he slipped and fell, landing heavily on his right elbow.
“Good God, are you alright?” I said, crouching by him. “You haven’t twisted your ankle, have you?”
“No, it’s my shoulder that hurts,” he said, breathing heavily. He cradled his arm to his body as if it were a dying animal. “Funny—I must have landed awkwardly.”
“Look at you: how are the mighty fallen. This wouldn’t have happened if you’d had my mountain goat’s agility,” I said. “Come on, we’d better head back to the camp.”
“No, I’m alright. We must try and find a good supply of fresh water. It’s important.”
“You don’t look in any state to continue,” I said firmly. He was still sitting on the muddy path, shaken and weak once more.
“I’ll manage,” he said, raising a smile. “Besides, Kunichika and Honey are out on a search too, and we don’t want them to beat us to it.”
I laughed. “That’s a good point, but not good enough for you to go charging off. You should be back in camp nursing a stiff drink.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I want to continue.” The familiar flash of stubbornness returned to his eyes, but his arm was still held awkwardly, as if any movement of it might cause pain.
“How about this for a compromise?” I said. “I’ll go on a quick reconnaissance, just till the brow of that next hill. If I do see something I’ll come back for you, otherwise we shall head straight back to camp.”
He looked dubious but nodded solemnly. “Look carefully, Peter,” he said as I set off. “There’s water nearby, I can sense it.”
“Yes, yes,” I called as I strode away. Of course I had every intention of dashing quickly to the top of the hill and then returning with the disappointing news that no stream had crossed my path. The terrain proved to be more difficult than I expected, however. The trail soon disappeared in a tangle of roots and foliage, and though I managed to regain it, sometime later it vanished again, washed away by recent rains. The trees closed in around me, the broken cover of leaves becoming a thick canopy. I did not panic, but kept moving in a straight line. I had fixed the position of the next hill in my mind’s eye, and trusted my instincts to find my way there; not once did I feel that I was cut off from Johnny.
The calm of the jungle impressed itself upon me, and I resolved to forget all that had happened before our arrival on this island—the storm, the rescue, everything. The sea did encourage madness amongst men, and women too. We all said things we did not mean; we were not ourselves when we spoke. Now, with solid ground under my feet, I knew better. Where was Snow, and what was she doing at that precise moment? I didn’t know: I hadn’t thought of her for a moment since arriving there. Such was the lucidity with which I was thinking that when I saw the first of the stones emerge from the forest before me, I merely paused to examine them. They were ancient and monumental, that much was clear, but still I did not rush to conclude what they might once have been. I was measured and calm throughout, testing the accuracy of my senses by touching every stone I saw. I followed the broken trail of stones until finally I saw it: a perfect tropical ruin, rising proudly from the jungle as if emerging from the pages of a dusty antiquarian lithograph. I walked around the ravaged, crumbling wall that guarded the perimeter of the tenebrous building. Che veduta: Piranesi could have spent a lifetime sketching this place. The ruinous state of the structure rendered it unidentifiable. A temple or a dwelling place? The creeping vines had long since claimed it as their own; epiphytic plants, some bearing grotesquely shaped flowers, sprouted from every crack in the once-magnificent masonry. Wasn’t it Aldous Huxley who likened tropical botany to late and decadent Gothic architecture? I had never truly believed him until now. Roots and stems and arching leaves so shrouded the stone structure that they ceased to be mere ornamentation; without them the building would surely collapse.
Remembering Johnny, I resisted the urge to venture inside the building and began to make my way back. Retracing my steps proved impossible. Nothing seemed familiar; all landmarks had vanished into the jungle. The blackened stump of a tree felled by lightning was nowhere to be seen; the egg-shaped boulder had camouflaged itself amidst the undergrowth. I sought higher ground, thinking that this would at least afford me a view of how hopelessly lost I was. I pushed my way through the unyielding trees, my arms becoming lacerated by invisible razor-thin whips. My progress was not encouraging: the topography of the land suddenly conspired to be flat and densely forested. Finally, however, a gentle incline offered itself to me, and I began to see the clear glint of sunlight at the top of a hillock. When I reached its summit I found myself surveying a shallow valley. A stream ran through this clearing, its banks lined thickly with gentle spikes of elephant grass and umbrellas of wild banana. And in the water there were two naked figures, Snow and Kunichika. I crouched low and watched them paddle in the water. He cut through it like a straight sharp knife whilst she splashed tentatively, occasionally arching her neck backwards to feel the cool of the water on her hair. She let the stream carry her to where it was deepest and darkest, allowing herself to be borne gently away before splashing back; he never seemed to venture far from the shallows, where the current was at its gentlest. Against the black water their skins glowed with an eerie luminescence. Pure white? No, it was beyond colour. They approached each other and he lifted his hands to her face. I turned away, my face hot, temples pulsing. I ran down the hill, letting instinct guide me through the trees. I had to get back to Johnny.
He was sitting on a tree stump watching me as I ran back up the path. “You took a very long time,” he said. “I was worried. I nearly went out searching for you.”
“Sorry,” I coughed. “I got slightly lost on the way back. I’ll exchange my agility for your sense of direction, I think.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No,” I said. “No water. I searched, though—that was why I was so long, I remembered what you said. But no, I didn’t find water.”
“That’s strange,” he said, as we began to head back to our tiny spartan camp. “I can feel it close by. Just instinct, that’s all.”
“Yes, well, I looked. But I did find a ruin. I think it may be a temple.”
He raised an eyebrow, a trait of mine he had begun to imitate. “A ruin?”
“You shall see for yourself soon enough.”
We wandered slowly through the trees, pointing out birds—little black-and-white hornbills and iridescent flycatchers—and chatting about books he wanted to read. “I wish I could read Dickens,” he said, “as Snow does.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I tried, it’s too difficult.”
“Someday soon I’m sure you’ll learn to appreciate it.”
He smiled and shook his head. He was looking very tired again. “I am resigned to certain things.”
As we approached the camp I reached to touch him on his shoulder. “I meant to thank you. The storm. I mean, I was foolish, I know. So. Thank you for—”
He shrugged. “For what? Look how we ended up.” His attempt at a smile was not convincing.
“We’re here, aren’t we? And alive, too, I should add.”
“I suppose,” he said, as we walked into the camp. The broken shade of the casuarinas and sea almonds cast snakeskin patterns on his face; his voice had become papery and dry, like the dead leaves that lay scattered on the sandy soil.
THIS ISLAND OF ABUNDANCE would erase the events of the past days, and we would start anew. That is what I believed, and for a while I was proved right.
“Isn’t it strange,” I said to Snow, “how one can forget something as awful as that storm we encountered. It’s only been a few days and alread
y the memory of it is devoid of terror. I can recall the events, of course, but I can’t feel anything. Funny, isn’t it, how the human mind works?”
“We humans have a remarkable capacity to disguise emotions,” she replied, drawing lazily in her notebook. “We suppress feelings, we force ourselves to forget things until, finally, we truly believe those things had never existed.” We were sitting in the confines of our camp after breakfast, sheltering from the sun. I reclined on the sand, propping myself up on my elbows as I chatted to her.
“Such cynicism in one so pure,” I said. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course. It’s how we survive, isn’t it?”
“You’re right, of course. I mean, let’s take the storm as an example. I remember being washed overboard; I can remember, clearly, being battered by the waves, swallowing gallons of water—I can still taste the salt at the back of my throat, but can I recall the terror? No, not really. Similarly, I can remember surfacing once the squall had passed, and I can remember seeing you, but as for how I felt: nothing! The elation of being alive, intense as it was then, no longer exists. I’ve simply forgotten. Of course I remember carrying you back to the boat, but I’m afraid I draw a blank as far as emotions are concerned.”
She closed her book and said, “I’ve forgotten too.”
“Quite.”
“What about death?” she said.
“You mean would I forget a person once he’s passed on?”
“Exactly. Their face—their image—would stay with you, of course. You’d remember what they looked like. The details may become vague, but you’d still remember. Just like a photograph. In your mind’s eye, you’d be able to re-create all their habits—the way they slept, how they ate: everything. But would you remember how you felt about them? And how they felt about you?”
I returned her gaze and tried not to blink. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Nor would I,” she said. “Death, I believe, erases everything. It erases all traces of the life that once existed, completely and forever. Of course we help it in its task—we’re the ones who do the forgetting.”
“I couldn’t argue with you.”
Her notebook rested on her knee. She tapped it with her pen as she gazed into the distance.
“You write every day, don’t you?” I said. “You’re religious about it.”
“Just aimless scribbles, nothing much. A woman’s frivolity.” She laughed. Although she sat casually on the sand, her head and neck were held with such poise that I felt round-shouldered and shabby, a dirty schoolboy dressed for games. “Besides,” she added, “it passes the time.” With that, she picked up her pen and opened her book.
I was almost out of earshot when I heard her call my name. “I meant to ask: How’s Johnny?”
“Fine,” I said. “He’s fine.”
I walked the length of the beach, heading towards a rocky head-land in the distance. By the time I sat down on the barnacle-clad rocks I already knew that I would steal her diary.
ON MY WAY BACK from my wondrous ruin I ran into Johnny and Honey. “Hello,” said Johnny. “I’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?” His voice was flat and bare of inflection, and his question hardly sounded like one.
“I’ve been at the ruin,” I said. “You?”
“Just chatting,” said Honey. “We were both out searching for some food for dinner this evening—I’m tired of tinned stew—and we literally bumped into each other. All the paths in this place seem to intersect a dozen times. I was just saying to Johnny that I’m sure they all lead to the same place. You agreed, didn’t you, Johnny?”
“Yes.”
“I’d never have thought of you as a hunter-gatherer, Honey,” I said. “What have you found?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m sure something will turn up. Johnny was going to teach me how to set snares for birds.”
“You seem very bloodthirsty, Honey,” I said. “Won’t fish do for dinner?”
“Fish and rice may do nicely for those of you who go native,” he said, “but I have a craving for a decent cut of meat. Anyway, I must be off. Hunting and gathering, you know.” He crashed through the narrow path heading back to the camp.
“Come on,” I said to Johnny. “I want to show you something. At the ruin.”
“Some other time, maybe,” he said. “I’m a bit tired.”
“You weren’t too tired to go off a-hunting with Frederick Honey.”
He remained silent. He blinked several times but his eyes stared vacantly as if incapable of focusing.
“Come on,” I urged, taking him by his arm. “A gentle walk will do you no harm. There’s something I’d like you to see. No one else knows about it yet—I want to keep it a secret, but I want you to see it.”
He nodded and tried to smile, but it seemed as if the faint frown that had settled on his face held his features in too tight a grip; his brow remained locked, his eyes were dead and dark, his mouth drawn thinly as if smirking. No laugh could break through that cladding; fatigue had imprinted itself on his face. He trailed after me without saying a word until we reached the ruin.
“I don’t see what’s so interesting about this place,” he said.
“I seem to be the only one on this island to appreciate the beauty of abandoned buildings. A ruin resonates with the lives of the people who once lived there. Just shut up and follow me, will you?”
“But it’s just a pile of rocks. Why do you spend so much time here?” he said as I scrambled down a bank to a clearing on the edge of the forest behind the ruin. He remained standing above me, hands obstinately on hips.
Containing my impatience, I said, “Being an aesthete, I am always hungry for beauty. You wouldn’t understand this.”
“I’ve noticed this hunger.”
“So has everyone. I don’t hide it.”
“But maybe there’s something else they haven’t seen about you?”
“Something else? What—like that something you were sharing with Honey just now?”
He made his way down the bank and fell in step with me as I headed for the trees; we did not speak until we were in the broken shade. “This is it,” I said. My earlier enthusiasm had dissolved into the afternoon heat. We stood in the middle of the irregular-shaped clearing I had made—created—over the past few afternoons. I had brought down saplings with a machete, slashed away the shrubby undergrowth, and broken off the lower branches, cutting a view towards the ruin and the dirty brook that ran beside it. I worked vigorously, singing as I heaved and perspired in the jungle’s hot hammam, but now it seemed that love’s labour was lost. The clearing no longer seemed as clean and virginal as it had when I left it: its boundaries were obscure, encroached upon by plants that seemed to have crept into its confines overnight. Outlines of dead logs I hauled away remained impressed on the damp earth, scarring the ground with their funereal shapes. Broken branches littered the place I had worked so hard to cleanse, and above us the canopy of leaves suddenly seemed more opaque than ever.
“What’s that?” Johnny said, pointing at a shady corner.
“A few things I brought with me,” I said, shuffling over to the small parcel I had left under a bush. “Some wine, knives and forks, one or two dishes. Most of them were broken in the storm.”
“Peter,” he said, fixing me with a squinting look of incomprehension. “Why did you bring this here? And your luggage—you must have had no room for your clothes. What’s this, you brought wine?”
I shrugged and surveyed the sorry assembly of dull silver and cracked china. Against the dark foliage and muddy soil they looked silly, a still life long abandoned by its painter.
Johnny said, “Peter, this is wonderful.”
“It seems a waste of effort, doesn’t it?”
“No, it’s magnificent,” he said, placing great stress on the second syllable. When he did so, I recognised that it was the way I pronounced the word. “Why did you do it?”
“I really don’t know. It seemed a
good idea at the time. I had visions of a rather romantic holiday—a backdrop of steaming tropical forest, beautiful servants waiting at the table, crystal glasses, laughter and merriment, music. I wanted a celebration. Instead we have this,” I said, looking around me, “this abject failure. Rather fitting, I think. You see, it’s my birthday tomorrow. Or the day after—I’ve lost count. It doesn’t seem to matter now.”
We remained silent for some time, fatigued, I think, by the intense afternoon heat. Then Johnnny said, “I want to tell you something. I don’t care if you repeat it or not—as you say, nothing seems to matter now. But all the same I want you to know it. It’s about Kunichika. He has given me a choice. He knows, Peter, he knows. He knows everything about me—what I do away from the shop. He knows about the people I meet, the places I go to, the things I say. He knows what I believe in.”
“How?” I said weakly.
“I don’t know. Someone must have told him. I have been betrayed. You were right, Peter—I will never know who my friends are in this Valley. It must have been someone who wants something from Kunichika. Who? I don’t know. Could be anyone. Kunichika can give anyone anything they want. To me, he has given a simple choice. It is more than anyone will ever get from him. If I choose correctly, if I help the Japanese, I will have everything I desire. They will protect me. I will be richer than T. K. Soong, richer than anyone in the Valley, more powerful. If. But if not, then I lose everything I have. My shop, certainly, but also my wife.”
“And you already know what you are going to do.”
He sat down on the ground, resting his back against a tree stump. “There is no way ahead for me.” He smiled.
I said, “Principles are one thing, survival is another.”
“Survival,” he said, chuckling as if chancing upon a novel idea. “Do you know what will happen to me if I collaborate with the Japanese?”
“No one need ever know.”
“I will always know, Peter,” he said, a thin smile settling on his features. “And you will always know.”