by Tash Aw
“I’m not listening to your revolting lies.”
He laughed amidst a plume of purple smoke. “Listen. I’m only telling you this because you’re one of us, and it’s my job to look after our kind, even if they’re as foolish as you. And you really are very stupid, I must say—you still haven’t worked things out for yourself. That’s what love—or lust—does to you, I suppose. Her father’s a clever man, isn’t he? He knows the Japs are coming. I do too. And when they come, he wants to be in their good books, he wants all the favours he can get. What can he give them to make sure he gets this? Mining concessions, certainly. Information on his dirty Bolshie son-in-law, gladly. And of course, there’s his daughter too, oh yes. No, it’s not nasty, it’s a question of survival. Everyone’s just doing their bit.”
“And what about you—what’s your bit?”
“Keeping the peace. Making sure everyone’s able to do their bit. Saving what I can for our lot.”
“Aren’t you afraid things might backfire?”
He laughed. “No fear of that. That’s why I’ve been sent along, to make sure business happens as usual. As long as I’m here, nothing will rock the boat.”
“So you’re here as a chaperone, I take it.”
“I suppose so,” he said, moving closer to me. I felt the hot smoke of his cigarette on my neck. “But I told you—I’m also looking after our kind,” he said.
“You’re lying about all of this,” I said.
“Am I?” he said, flicking the stub of his cigarette into a tangle of bushes. “Put the woman out of your mind. You’ll walk away from her and in a few months’ time you’ll forget she ever existed.” He reached across and put his hand on my thigh, his fleshy fingers gripping hard. I pushed him away, feeling a sudden rush of strength in my arms. He fell against a stone step, looking at me quizzically.
“I shan’t forget her.”
He smiled, his body supine and relaxed. “Come come, dear,” he sneered, his teeth showing in the hazy darkness. “You’re being silly. She loathes you; you’re a freak. Johnny hates you too. Everyone does except me. Come here.”
And then I was upon him, hitting and scratching and kicking. His neck was soft as mud as I forced my hands around it, pushing and pushing and pushing until he struggled no more. A sneer remained etched on his face as I dragged him out into the sea, letting the waves take his body. It was nearly morning and I felt very strong.
I NEVER SWORE not to see Johnny again. There was never any need for such dramatic oath-making. I simply knew our paths would never cross.
After the war I drifted slowly from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and then embarked on aimless wanderings around the country, never staying in one place for very long. I walked in the thickly forested hills that ran down the spine of the peninsula, but the jungle induced panic within me and I had to leave. I went to Port Dick-son and watched young families at play on the beach; the swell of the waves made me anxious and I moved on again, heading inland, away from the coast. All over the country I saw things that unsettled me—a young woman scribbling in a notebook in Kuantan, a smiling square-shouldered youth cycling under an indigo sky on a sultry afternoon in Terengganu. I did not know whether I was escaping or searching: it felt as if I was doing both, and neither.
Then one day I came face to face with it, that which I was escaping or searching for, that remained nameless to me. I took the train to Kuala Lumpur with the vague intention of travelling back to Singapore. In truth I hardly cared where I went. I was content to go wherever my failed instincts led me, and on this day they led me to that platform at the station in KL. I stepped off the train and paused to buy a bottle of warm orangeade. I lifted the bottle to my lips and there, sitting calmly on a bench before me, was Johnny. He sat with his back to me, the familiar broad shoulders hunched forward as if holding something to his chest. Through the dust-heavy air, sunlight fell in broken streams on his back; the shapes on his batik shirt curled wavelike on a deep blue background. I hid behind a pillar and watched him from a distance. Every few moments he would lower his head to his chest, as if falling asleep. It was only when I moved round to another hiding place that I saw he was cradling a sleeping child, keeping it close to his chest. He bent his neck and kissed the top of the head, and then he shifted his right arm, freeing his hand to stroke the glossy hair, soothing the child’s sleep. The child was no more than two or three years old, a boy of clear, pinkish complexion. He clung to Johnny’s shirt, his tiny fists gripping the colourful cloth as he slept. His legs kicked out now and then in spasms of sleep; every time he did so Johnny would kiss his head and blow gently on his face, chasing the heat away. I watched the child wake, sleepy-eyed and uncertain, surveying the platform—the hawkers touting their wares, the chickens in cages, the rickshaw-pullers and porters. He stood on the bench next to Johnny, never taking his hands off his shoulders. I saw his eyes—bright and deep and soft. He looked around, his delicate brow curving into a frown I knew so well. I moved away from the pillar, hoping that he would look in my direction, but he did not. As I retreated into the shadows once more, he returned to the safety of Johnny’s embrace, resting his head in the hollow of Johnny’s neck. And there the two remained, clinging to each other in the hot dusty afternoon until their train arrived to bear them away from me. I caught a glimpse—only a glimpse—of Johnny’s eyes as the train drew out of the station. He sat at the window, passing so close to where I was standing that I feared he had seen me. But his eyes were dark and hollow, and he saw nothing.
Long after the train had gone I found myself sitting on the platform, alone amidst the chaos. I reached into my satchel and took out a photograph, something I carried with me everywhere I went. Without hesitating I tore it in two, separating myself from Snow and Johnny. Before my nerve failed me, I walked to the post office and put husband and wife in an envelope. And then I sent them away and waited for my memories of them to fade, completely and forever. As they dropped out of my life and into the postbox I saw the words I had scribbled: The Harmony Silk Factory, Kampar. I couldn’t remember the rest of the address, but it hardly seemed to matter.
ISN’T IT FUNNY,” I said, “how your wonderful marquis-professor has stopped speaking altogether.”
“He’s troubled by Honey’s death,” she replied.
“He’s even stopped speaking to you, it seems. How odd that a man who’s been through as much as he has, who’s been part of that vicious butchery in Manchuria, should be so upset by an accidental drowning.” We were sitting in the meagre glow of the after-supper embers, she with her notebook balanced tentatively on her knees.
“I told you never to mention what I’ve said about Mamoru. You aren’t even supposed to know.”
“Only you and I have speaking roles now,” I continued. “Kunichika and Johnny hover silently on the edge of the spotlight; Honey lies inert in the dressing room.”
“I’m not sorry,” she said, “about Honey. I never liked him.”
“Nor I.” In the hesitant light she looked tired and worn and I wanted to sink my head to her bosom. I said, “You do know he isn’t in love with you.” No answer. “Johnny, I mean.”
She said, “How do you know he doesn’t love me?”
“I didn’t say he didn’t love you. I said he wasn’t in love with you.”
“That is not the same thing. You’re right.”
I did not answer.
“And what about you, Peter?” she said. “Are you capable of love?”
“Of course I am.”
“Are you? Name someone you have loved.”
I paused for a moment. A sudden rush of blood inflamed my face, and my throat felt dry, unresponsive. I was glad it was dark: surely she could not have seen my strangled expression. “Not merely one person,” I managed to say after a while. “I am in love with all of this. The Orient and all its peoples.”
She laughed a rich, deep laugh. “That is definitely not love.”
“Yes it is.”
“How so?” sh
e demanded.
“Because,” I said, “the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.”
“I never know who you are quoting when you speak, Peter,” she said.
“It’s not important.”
I got up and brushed the sand off my legs. “Tread carefully with Kunichika,” I said.
“I’ve told you before, Peter, there’s nothing to fear,” she replied, her voice falling. She did not wish to discuss the matter, that much was clear.
“You can’t be sure of that,” I said.
There was no answer. I walked away, treading the line where the trees met the sand; the forest hushed and the sea burnt into the shore. My hands throbbed; I looked at them and remembered my fingers tightening around Honey’s fleshy neck. I had no choice. I knew what I had to do.
I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU, I said to Kunichika, a secret, something you would kill to know. Meet me at the ruin, I said, and I will reveal something that will change your life. It will change all our lives and lead us to our true destinies. He laughed and said, Anything to make you happy. Please, this is not a joke, I said, I’m deadly serious. I am Johnny’s best friend, if you see what I mean; I know things about him. I understand, he said, I’ll be there. Of course I was there before him, hiding in the undergrowth, lying in wait. Johnny’s white baldachin cloth lay fallen, hanging from a broken branch. Its pale beauty captured the moonlight as it shivered gently in the night; but I did not reach for it, because I was safe in the shadows and did not wish to venture into the light. And yet soon I would have to. I felt for the knife in my pocket—it seemed strangely superfluous, as useless to me at that moment as a Fabergé egg or a box of chocolates. I did not know why I had bothered to take it with me: my hands were all that I would need; they alone would carve my destiny. Who said that the jungle is silent and mysterious? It isn’t. It spoke to me in all its voices, screaming its tale in the sentient darkness. I did not understand the language of this violent polyphony; I was its mere dumb audience, waiting for the story to suggest itself to me. And then it began: the first player strolling onto the stage, skirting the ramparts of the gorgeous painted set (a ruin! the audience gasps, stifling involuntary applause). He is contemplative, hands in pockets, wistful in the way all lovers are, and we the hitherto uncomprehending audience sense at once that this will soon end in tragedy. But wait: what’s this? Another player—but it is not the dashing lover’s bitter enemy, the evil murderous villain of the piece, whom we are expecting. It is a woman; her appearance is unscripted. The slenderness of her figure and the strength of her purposeful stride lend her the appearance of a youth: a castrato, perhaps, or an Elizabethan heroine? Ah, the audience understands: It is the lover’s lover, she whose star crosses his, utterly and irreversibly (the orchestra strikes a shivering, convulsing tune, the chorus shrieks discordantly). But what is going to happen? The lovers talk, clasp hands, smooth each other’s gorgeous coltish hair. Our hero is reluctant, troubled, distant. He cannot respond to the pleadings of his bella donna. He draws away in anguish, for he knows they will never live happily ever after. Montagues and Capulets they are; the divide will never be bridged. She is distraught: Why, why, why? she wonders. What have I done, what has come between us? O cruel and vengeful gods, why have you taken my love away from me? (The chorus is silent and only the strings remain in the orchestra, dolcissimo, as our hearts sink. Tears in the audience, for she does not know what we silent voyeurs do: that he hides something from her.) She brings her lips to his once more but is repulsed by our tortured hero. And then he is upon her, forcing his hard lips on her face and neck, pinning her body to the beautiful cold stone as he manoeuvres himself onto her. Shock. What is happening? He tears at her clothes, exposing her limpid skin to the strained light from above. She is silent, bewildered as we are. He pushes her legs apart, her sinuous androgyne’s thighs flashing in the dark. And the audience is stunned, for now we understand that this is the awful denouement: The hero is not the hero, but the villain. O Melpomene, Muse of tragedy, how cruel art thou! Our antihero now fumbles with his trousers. He cannot undo them, for he is breathless and shaking with impatience. The audience screams silently, but our heroine does not call out. Resist, resist, we implore—but we are powerless. But wait: if the hero is revealed as the villain, then he whom we have thus far known as the villain must be the true hero! O joy O rapture—but where is he? Will he be too late to save the day? There is no sign of him, he is still hidden in the forest. This tale is destined to end in despair. A scream. Our heroine realises that she has been deceived. Scellerato! Monster! She struggles against the weight of this evil, duplicitous scoundrel. He pins her to the ground with the weight of his beautiful hard body, but still he cannot free himself from the constraints of his clothing. She kicks and screams and scratches but is powerless against her assailant. But then another man arrives, bellowing in rage: at last, he is here, our newly uncloaked hero. He has emerged from the trees to save the day. The noise he makes distracts the villain for the briefest of moments, but it is enough for our heroine. She breaks free from the grip of her tormentor and runs, runs from the scene of this betrayal. (Exit the true villain, slipping away into the shadows: the audience does not care for him any longer.) Our distraught heroine is in tears, and our new hero pursues her, seeking to give her succour. Come to your true love, we exhort! At last he catches her, pulling her close to him. We thought he was weak before but now we know he is not. With the heroine in his arms he seems stronger than ever; we understand, at last, that he needs her truly to become himself. It is only when he is with her that we can see him for the good and loving man that he is, and that all his life he has needed someone to love and now he has found her. No longer do we recognise the pathetic figure of a man, alone and drifting, stripped of all dignity. This heroine is the one who transforms the lives of the men she touches. Funny, isn’t it, the way one man can be so utterly different, as if containing two separate lives within him. Music: smorzando, fading away until only the hero’s voice can be heard, singing calmly, molto molto tranquillo, to his beloved. The painted backdrop is different now; the ruin has faded into the distance and we find ourselves in a clearing in the forest, a strange garden of restrained beauty, adorned by a single frangipani tree. Only the two true lovers remain. They sink to the ground in desperate embrace. He kisses her brow. Only now do they both realise that they have found someone who cares for them. It is the only moment of truth they will ever experience in their whole lives. The spotlight expires and the lovers dissolve into the deep dark night.
I WATCHED HER BATHE in the cold dawn stream. Mist drifted down from the hills and clung to the trees around us. The cobalt waters seemed scarcely to ripple as she waded slowly into its depths. I sat naked on the grassy bank, my wet skin prickling in the dewy air. I could not look at her face, her silent eyes. She rose from the stream, picking her way slowly through the muddy shallows. Beads of water clung to her skin, adorning her body with a thousand tiny jewels. Even then I knew, of course, that we would never be together again. We would return to the forlorn remains of our camp, where Johnny would be waiting with wordless inscrutability, and Kunichika would be calm and charming once more; we would not speak about this night again; we would scarcely even touch, other than the accidental brushing of hands as we passed food or water to each other in some prosaic domestic routine. Only we would know what had passed between us. I wanted to believe that this secret acorn would flourish in its hiding place and one day grow into a stately invisible oak, but even as we walked back through the lightening dawn I knew it would not happen. Our secret was always destined to fester, growing more unhappy with each passing day, for such is the bitterness of Wormwood: it poisons everything.
I fell heavily into a dreamless sleep, and when I awoke there was no one around. The tarpaulins had been dismantled and packed bags lay piled on top of one another like the bodies of small dead animals. I walked calmly over to Snow’s things and searched for her journal. I found it—a simple clothbound not
ebook filled with neat handwriting on unlined paper. I took it and placed it in my satchel.
The tide was at its lowest when we carried our things through the trees across the wide, flat beach. The sea had retreated a long way into the distance, leaving the boat marooned on an expanse of grey sand. We splashed through the shallow streaks of warm brine as we ferried the remnants of our camp to the boat, and then we sat on the deck waiting for the tide to come in and bear us away. The sky was deepening with rain clouds and the air was very still.
I FELL ILL almost as soon as I arrived back in Kampar. I collapsed on my bed and locked the door, leaving strict instructions not to be disturbed. My room smelled of mothballs and cat piss; I sank heavily into a fever, my bedclothes damp and peeling from my bare skin like old bandages every time I moved. And then came the shivers, the awful gripping shivers that made me whimper silently into the wet sheets. I could not escape this punishment, so I closed my eyes and surrendered to it. I let my insides be burnt by the fever and cut by the cold until I began to find relief in this cycle. Fever sweats shivers fever sweats shivers. Several times Johnny came to the door, imploring me to emerge. His frenzied voice cajoled and begged and raged, but I remained in my fetid den. I was safer there; torture had become my companion and I did not wish for anything more. When, several days (weeks? who knows?) later my condition “improved,” and the tremors no longer wracked my body, I sat on my bed and found myself alone in a bare, airless room. The thin hiss of the wireless was the only noise I heard. The Prince of Wales, it announced, had been sunk. Together with its mighty companion the Repulse, the HMS Unsinkable had been destroyed by Japanese kamikaze planes in the South China Sea off the coast of Kuantan. Pearl Harbor, I learnt, had already been attacked. Hong Kong and the islands of the Philippines had fallen; Siam would soon follow. Landings had been made in the north of the country, in Kota Baru, and soon they would be upon us in the Valley. I rose unsteadily to my feet and made for the door.