The Parasol Flower

by Quevillon, Karen;

  Fifty-Five

  After an interminably long flight and a drive that gave new meaning to the word “pothole,” Barnaby and I were recuperating in our guesthouse when fireworks began shooting off. Separately, we stumbled into the hallway and out onto the enormous covered steps of the Sayong Resort.

  “What for?” he moaned to me.

  Our view of the impressive display was partly obscured by a cluster of high-rises closer to the city center.

  “National holiday?” I guessed.

  The desk clerk, who must have seen us exit, coughed discreetly behind us. He was dark-haired and light-skinned, with round gold-framed glasses and a sensitive aura about him. I wondered if perhaps he were a student at the local university. His name, he later told me, was Danish. “Very good guess,” said the man. “But Independence Day is not until next week.”

  The bang-banging of the fireworks continued. I rubbed my eyes.

  “What are they for, then?” snapped Barnaby, clearly cross that we were being put through a guessing game on top of everything else.

  Danish beamed. “A football celebration. We’ve just walloped Thailand. You are fortunate to be here on this special day.”

  “Yes,” said Barnaby, slouching back to the entryway, “fortunate.”

  I stayed out on the breezy step with Danish after Barnaby had gone, apologizing for his crankiness and offering my congratulations on the match.

  “Yes, it is nice,” he said. He smiled for a long moment, and added, “And nice to be traveling with your grandfather.”

  I laughed and explained that we weren’t related, just friends. “Sort of,” I added. “We’re…uh…doing field research, I guess you could say.”

  The fireworks boomed on. The Sayong Resort itself was deserted, and I saw clearly now that poor Danish was stuck at work that night instead of celebrating the soccer victory with his friends. In the back room he’d probably had his television set on, but the resort wasn’t the kind of place to deck itself out for a sporting event. Barnaby had insisted we go upscale, at least while we were visiting the Royal City of Kuala Kangsa, as all the guidebooks had proclaimed it. The party was clearly elsewhere.

  “Did you grow up here?” I asked him.

  “In Kuala Kangsa? Yes.”

  “So you know where everything is.”

  He nodded happily.

  In her letters, Hannah had mentioned the Residency, the public gardens, the marketplace, the fishing wharf, the mosque, Ridge Road, the Perak Club, the police station, and the postal office on the high street. The outpost of Kuala Kangsa had grown into a city. Finding these landmarks was like peeling back the layers of an onion. Danish advised us on where to peel.

  And so I walked where Hannah may have walked, through shady neighborhoods, and a bustling marketplace, along a road on a ridge with a view of the Perak River, though this road had sidewalks and palatial homes. In the public gardens, Barnaby and I sat with plastic cups of bubble tea, gawping at the ballooning clouds. We strolled the grounds, sniffing roses and marveling at how finely clipped the lawn was.

  The police station had been relocated twice, it seemed, toward the periphery of the city, and we did not bother to seek it out. On the high street, we entered a few of the tourist shops. I put postcards in the mail for my parents and Daphne and Bob, even one for Chris and Zoe, using the same postal service Hannah had used over a hundred years earlier. And the same clerk, by the looks of him. How strange that her letters had somehow found their way to me. I’d touched them, read them, entered into her concerns, her hopes, her imaginings. I’d met her in her art, too, and in a weird way found myself there. Hannah Inglis would never know me, of course. Or know how she’d changed my life. Reflecting on the whole experience, as one tends to when traveling—and journaling, as I had started to do—it was beginning to blow my mind.

  “I think this is it,” Barnaby said. “Our stop.”

  We trundled to the front of the bus, not seeing how else we were supposed to make our stop known to the driver. The driver slowed as we talked at him and pointed to the sign for the cemetery. Danish had told me that in the immediate area, there were in fact seven cemeteries: a small one in the center of town for the founding British officers and cadets of the region (with the latest burial being 1822), three others that had Christian Chinese bodies, two for the Muslim faith (a sprawling one for the Malay Muslim population and a much smaller one for those Muslims who had come from India), and finally the Western Highland English cemetery. This seemed our best bet. The Western Highland contained people of all faiths, including Catholics, Protestants, and even one or two Jewish graves. We discovered that although it was called an English cemetery, Germans, Dutch, French, and other nationalities were represented, too. Even someone from Argentina.

  Bounded by apartment blocks and shaded by fine-leafed locust trees, the cemetery was larger than it had appeared from the road. Barnaby and I spent a good thirty minutes wandering in opposite directions before we caught up with each other in an area dominated by large, raised crypts. He read out the message on the end of one facing us: “Both parents expired on the morning of April 2, 1869, and their son on the previous afternoon, from jungle fever. Golly!”

  “I know,” I said. “There were some ‘jungle fevers’ over there.”

  “See any Inglises?”

  “Not yet.” Unfortunately, many of the stones of that era were almost entirely eroded. And it was of course possible George and Hannah had left the country, let alone the area. We strolled past Woolriches and Kavanblatzes, other Georges, and other Hannahs. One Amelia Burns, who had died at only four years old. It was a rough life, I thought.

  “Perhaps Hannah couldn’t afford a headstone,” I remarked. Though I did not like to think of her penniless.

  “She might have died in the jungle,” Barnaby suggested. “She might have slipped and fallen into a cave or drowned in a rushing river. That’s rather more exciting.”

  “Or been eaten by a tiger,” I said, grimacing.

  We kept walking. In one corner of the cemetery, bounded by a stone wall, was a small burial ground dedicated to the Sikh community. We picked our way over.

  “I suppose they’ve been assimilated too,” Barnaby said as we ducked under an archway.

  Inside was a grouping of monuments for the fallen Sikh policemen of the region of Perak and a historical plaque set into a large plinth. I read the plaque with interest. It spoke of how the Sikhs had been brought by the British to Malaya as convicts. In Penang and Perak, these men had performed the dangerous and difficult labor of clearing the dense forest, draining the swamplands, and building the railroad that connected Taiping, a port, to Kuala Kangsa and the mining town of Ipoh. Essentially, after the railroad had been constructed they were released from service. Most of the men who’d survived went on to form the regional police force for the growing colony.

  So he’d been a convict, her sergeant. What crime had he committed? I wondered. Had Hannah known about it? I looked up and inhaled the scent of the pine boughs above me. Going from criminal to police officer had probably been a natural transition.

  “I’ve found a ‘D. Singh,’” said Barnaby, who was stooped in front of one wall of the monument. The wall was lined with columns of engraved names. The Sikhs cremated their dead; there were no headstones to be found.

  “Really?”

  “Oh. Here’s another,” he said.

  Together we counted five D. Singhs on the list.

  We returned at the end of the day to our Sayong Resort with sore feet and bellies full of ikan bakar. In my head I was struggling to make peace with the idea that we might find no traces of Hannah Inglis in this place. Malaysia had moved on, and rightly so. I reaffirmed my vow to absorb and enjoy as much of the trip as possible, whatever happened. I was lucky to have traveled so far.

  “It’s ironic,” I said to Barnaby.

 
We were in my room, each of us with a cup of tea.

  “What’s ironic?” He didn’t look up. He was reviewing his topographic map yet again.

  “Somehow I had the idea that coming here was going to bring me closer to the truth about who Hannah was. Closer. Like I could be an eyewitness or something. Find an exotic, alien reality.”

  “But she lived here well over a hundred years ago.”

  “It’s not just the timing. The point is there’s no way of getting outside of anyone’s story. The story is all we’ve got.”

  He looked up, blank. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Forget it. I’m such an idiot. With Hannah, I’ve been going against every premise in the discourse.”

  I looked at him for a moment, head bent again to peer at his map, and decided I would try to explain it after all. Maybe less for Barnaby’s sake than my own. I said, “Foucault identified it. People make recourse to something like ‘nature’ or the ‘essential’ to put an end to questions and to ground their authority. Take racial identity, for example. It’s totally fictional. What makes somebody ‘white’ or ‘black’ or ‘red’ depends on whatever social conventions are in play wherever you’re referring to somebody as ‘white’ or ‘black’ or ‘red.’

  Same with gender. And so the line of reasoning that says to define what it means to be a woman, we have to double down and look at the ‘biology alone’—that’s deceptive. There is no ‘biology alone.’ That way of approaching things is just begging the question. Just privileging certain traits, calling them what’s ‘natural,’ and saying they’re the things that constitute identity. The whole thing is a rhetorical move. I’m falling for the same kind of logic, Barnaby. Why should Hannah’s bones be any more Hannah than her letters or her paintings? Really, why should coming here bring me any closer to knowing her?”

  I hadn’t spoken in this way in a long time. It felt strange, like putting on an old pair of gloves.

  Barnaby poked his head up again. “I’m glad I went into science.”

  I grunted, a little disappointed he wasn’t going to engage me on the topic. Turning to the miniature dual-purpose tea/coffee maker, I set about replacing the round teabag in the filter holder to make more tea. Red Rose. No, probably not from a local plantation. I removed the wet bag, flung it in the garbage, tore open another. When I poured the new water into the machine, most of it dribbled down the front of the carafe and onto the carpet.

  “Why can’t they design a spout that doesn’t spill? Is that really too much to ask?”

  And having replaced the round teabag, I couldn’t get the miniature filter basket to slide back in place. I fiddled with the angle, ramming the little plastic cup back and forth, liquid sloshing.

  “Here, here,” said Barnaby softly, reaching to still my hand. “Fetch your cup.”

  I watched him slide the basket neatly into place as I handed him my paper cup. Hot brown liquid soon started dripping into it.

  “You’re disappointed,” he said, “that we haven’t found anything definitive.”

  “Sort of,” I admitted.

  There was a knock at the door. Danish was standing in the hallway, his hands pressed together as if in prayer. “Hi! Just thought of something,” he said. “Have you tried the local library?”

  Yes, I truly was an idiot.

  Fifty-Six

  Hannah finds the colonel is at the desk in his office, surrounded by bare walls and crates. He is skimming over what appears to be a shipping log.

  “I’m not coming,” she tells him.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m not coming to England with you.”

  “That’s…” He presses his palms into the desk, looking intently at her before rising to his feet. “I won’t pay for you to stay here, Hannah. I warn you.”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect that.”

  They eye each other, exhibits of themselves. It is late in the morning. The air is fresh and dry enough to feel through her pores that the rainy season is coming to an end. Her satchel waits by the front door.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he blurts out. “What will you do, Hannah? You’re simply not well. You must be…you must be bewitched,” he accuses her bizarrely.

  “I will be fine,” she says. She feels calm, quite calm, in fact.

  “Good god, you’re incredible! You know you won’t earn anything. How could you earn anything? You’ll be put on the streets. You’ll destroy your reputation, our reputation. And your health. I hope you don’t think I’m having that on my conscience. I’ll let it be known that you—”

  “Be quiet please, George. You can let whatever you want to be known be known. I don’t care. What will you do, have my throat slit as well?”

  The mask drops over his face. “You think I am responsible for—? I assure you, I am not.”

  Looking at him, she doesn’t feel assured. She’s had plenty of time to think everything through. Hannah says, “It’s what you do, George. Or rather, who you are. You would have killed every last tiger in the bush. And for what purpose? Cleo was long gone.”

  The colonel appears transfixed, caught within his clothes. Hannah doesn’t wait any longer.

  Later, the colonel finds her in the public gardens. Who knows how long he would have been looking, to come across her here. He’s likely never set foot in the gardens. She sees him walking up the gravel path and fights the impulse to gather up her tubes of paint and her palette and clutch everything to her.

  She is painting the south gate itself: the honey-colored stone wall where it curls into an arch over the delicate wrought-iron door. A glimpse of the wild greens beyond. As he approaches, Hannah lifts her brush and slides it behind her ear.

  The colonel looks for a long time at the unfinished painting propped on her lap. He appears to have been crying. His face is somber as he hands her a fold of bills.

  “For the first while,” he says. “To tide you over.” He clears his throat. “I redeemed your ticket.”

  Hannah takes the money, knowing at once there is more there than the price of a steamship’s passage. A terrifying abyss seems to fall open beneath her. The depth of the Pacific Ocean itself.

  “Thank you,” she tells him.

  He half-shrugs, nods. Then he cups her shoulder a little roughly. “Take care of yourself, Hannah.”

  “You as well, George.”

  Later still, she hears the great horn sounding and resounding on the steamer as it exits the harbor. The silence that comes after is profound.

  George, James, Lucy, so many others who’ve come and gone, inevitably, sliding along toward their destinies. Eva and her family have already left for a place called Darwin, fittingly. And yet it feels as if she is the one who has pushed out to sea, the familiar features of the coastline diminishing and blurring before her eyes.

  Hannah picks at her fingernails, digging out the dried paint. A good wash is what she needs. She packs up her paints and belongings and is halfway up Cinnamon Hill before she remembers that her suitcases are in the opposite direction, at her new house. Amalaka Singh, it turns out, is landlady to half the townspeople in the lower village. Young as she is she knows her business, and most of the village’s business as well. “Anybody give you trouble,” she told Hannah, and her elder brother and father would “apply the muscle.” The sort of trouble, Hannah imagines, that women who live alone are expected to encounter.

  Amalaka had conducted the transaction. She’d brought Hannah into the sitting room of her family’s home, the men looking on. “Three bungalows are available at this time.”

  “I don’t want his,” Hannah said immediately, her voice choking on itself. “I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  She took a deep breath and pressed the soles of her feet into the thatch flooring. There were pictures of the Sikh gurus on Amalaka’s wall as well. Everything else felt qui
te different: the light in the room, its vaguely sweet smell, like clover. Hannah could hear the child gabbling at somebody in an adjacent room.

  Amalaka’s brother said something in Punjabi, she supposed, and the three of them had a brief discussion.

  “How long?” Amalaka asked her.

  Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know. Indefinitely.”

  Again, they spoke. Stealing glances, Hannah interpreted the father as reticent, the brother and sister more sanguine. All three must have considered her move unusual. If they had any qualms about her friendship with Sergeant Singh, they voiced no objections to her. Part of her ached for them to complain. They should castigate her for ruining his life. Rake her over the coals. Demand to know: how was anything ever going to be put right?

  The family seemed to reach a resolution. Amalaka said to her, “So of the remaining two bungalows, one is fresher and one is older. Unfortunately, the fresher one is next door to the missionary family.”

  “Oh,” said Hannah, “you mean Mr. and Mrs. Watts?”

  “Yes,” the three of them said at once.

  The Watts children, apart from Jane, were known to be a rambunctious crew, it was true, and Mr. Watts came by his fire-and-brimstone reputation honestly. Yet Beatrice, for all her faults, was a kind woman. Without Lucy and the LAP members to goad her on, she might even take on some original qualities. “I know the Watts,” Hannah said.

  “Yes, and do they not know you?” Amalaka replied, translating for her father.

  In an instant, Hannah realized how wrong she’d got it. The question was not whether she could put up with the Watts, but whether they could put up with her. Would their god-fearing family be content with a sinner, a rebellious and broken woman, in their midst?

  Hannah said, her chest tightening, “By all means, I am content with the older bungalow. I don’t want to cause trouble.”

  She heads there now, to the smaller, older bungalow situated at the end of one of the lanes running toward the river. It is less desirable because of its proximity to the stilted homes clustered along the river. The poorest of the village live in the stilted huts, whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, or people from the hill tribe who ventured out of the forest. The stilted community throws its kitchen choppings out its windows, and they urinate and defecate out them, too. Depending on which way the breeze is blowing, especially at low tide, the smell can be intense. Because of the kitchen choppings, there are dogs that make their homes in the tall grasses. They pace and whine and occasionally choke themselves on fish bones. Noisy carrion crows visit, too.