The Harmony Silk Factory (21 page)

“Peter,” I said, “why are you creeping around in the dark?” I think I sounded cross, for he seemed taken aback.

“I’m most certainly not creeping around,” he said. “Creeping is-n’t my
style.
One might ask the same of you, my dear. What on earth are you doing out here?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just looking at the garden.”

He stood next to me and peered out into the dark. “Can’t see anything. Are you sure there’s a garden out there?”

“The remains of one, yes. Father says that in its heyday, this was the most famous garden in the country. The man who built it went on to run the botanical gardens in Penang.”

“How extraordinary. I didn’t know you took an interest in matters horticultural.”

He leapt up to sit on the balustrade—a sudden explosion of arms, elbows, and knees. I resisted the urge to comment on his lack of coordination. He pulled at his trousers, straightening their legs, and, in doing so, managed to catch me with an elbow.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Good night, Peter,” I said, and I walked back to my room, leaving him sitting on his own.

I checked on my diary again and went to bed. When Johnny eventually crawled in next to me I pretended to be asleep. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, and I sighed hazily. “Sleep, sleep,” he said. His lips were thick and dry. He fell asleep quickly, mumbling and breathing heavily.

Above his gentle snoring I heard the scratching of rats out in the corridor.

WE WERE ALL GLAD to leave the Formosa, I think. Yesterday’s confinement due to the rain had made us restless, and we waited anxiously to see if the sun would burn its way through the early-morning cloud.

“Rough night?” Honey said, with, I thought, the slightest hint of lasciviousness in his voice. “You’re looking tired.”

I ignored the remark and began to drag my case across the forecourt to the car.

“Let me help you,” Kunichika said, taking my things from me. He strode powerfully into the sun, descending a small flight of stone stairs in two quick steps.

The previous day’s rain had washed thin rivers of mud onto many of the smaller roads, but we drove on regardless. This was the only way to Tanjong Acheh, the point on the coast where we will catch a boat to the Seven Maidens. That was Johnny’s opinion. Even I was surprised at how certain he sounded. We are now a long way from Kampar—farther, surely, than any boy can cycle. Perhaps this was where he was born, where he grew up; perhaps he did not, as we all believe, spend his youth as a labourer in Tiger Tan’s famous shop. His knowledge of this place seemed to come from some deep recess, something locked away so safely that even he may have forgotten its origin.

It was at that moment that I realised, with absolute clarity, that I did not know him at all. But then again I think I have always known that intimacy between us was impossible. That was why I wanted him: he would always be alien to me. And worse, it was I who pretended otherwise. I said things I now know were untrue. “We are kindred spirits,” I told him as we held hands by the river, not a hundred yards from my parents’ disapproving gaze. He looked at me with innocent eyes and believed every word I said. Then, as now, there lies an unfordable divide between us. Even Mother, in her own bizarre way, is at one with Father. She understands what he wants of her, and vice versa. They each supply what the other needs. That is marriage.

At around midday Honey stopped the car in the shade of a large mangosteen tree whose branches hung thinly over the road. We got out and leant against the car while eating the tiffins we had brought with us from the hotel. There were boiled eggs, luncheon meat, fried bread, and rice with
sambal belacan.
Peter let out a large yelp, as if something had startled him, and began rummaging in his rust-coloured satchel.

“I’ve just remembered something,” he said, and he pulled out a camera. It was sleek and black and looked brand-new. In his uneven, loping gallop, he ran a short distance away and turned to face us. He examined the top of the camera, uncertain of the buttons, while we continued to pick at our food.

“The fool doesn’t know how to use the camera,” Honey said.

Johnny began to walk towards Peter to offer his help, but just then Peter raised the camera to his face and called out, “Look
wonderful,
everyone.”

I tried to smile but the sun made me squint.

Peter beamed brightly and began to walk back to the car. Suddenly he stopped and raised his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the light. “Hello,” he said, “there’s something further up the road. Some
one,
I think. A woman. Selling fruit, it seems to me. Come and have a look.”

We trudged out into the middle of the mud-streaked road. Sure enough, in the distance, we saw an old Malay woman with baskets of fruit set out on either side of her. She sat perfectly still, and looked as if she had been there for a very long time.

“How strange,” said Honey. “ We didn’t spot her before, did we?”

None of us had.

“Where on earth do you think she’s appeared from?” Peter said. “And what is she doing here anyway? This road is hardly what you might call a highway.”

He was right. We had not seen another car since leaving the Formosa.

“She might have walked out of the jungle,” Johnny said, pointing vaguely at the thickly forested expanse around her. “There are many hidden villages, even where you least expect to find them.”

Kunichika turned to Johnny and said, “Are you sure?”

“I’m not convinced,” Honey said. “Look at the undergrowth—no one could have walked through that carrying baskets of fruit.”

“Let’s go and talk to her,” Peter said, like a child asking to be taken to the seaside.

She was several hundred yards away, and when we approached we saw that her baskets were filled with all kinds of fruit: jackfruit, rambutan, chiku, guava, mangosteen. We bought as much as we could and immediately began to eat. We had not realised how hungry we were from the driving.

Peter whispered in my ear. “Snow, is she
blind
?”

I had not noticed her eyes—pale and cloudy with cataracts. Speaking in Malay, I asked her where she had come from—had she walked far?

Her reply was in a dialect so strange, so
rural
I could not understand it. I looked at Johnny, but he shrugged his shoulders.

“What did she say?” Peter whispered with mounting excitement.

I paraphrased my questions in the hope of getting a more lucid response. Again, the same mumble. It did not even sound like Malay. I exchanged a quizzical look with Johnny. “I can’t understand either,” he said.

“I believe,” Kunichika said, “that Johnny’s hunch was right after all. She has come from a settlement a few miles from here. She says that her daughters helped her carry the baskets and will return later to help her home.”

“Well, tell her she’ll be waiting a long time for her next customer,” Honey said.

I looked at Kunichika as he spoke, his thin lips widening into a smile. His voice sounded as if it belonged to a different person.

The old woman muttered something.

“What did she say?” Peter said as we began to walk back to the car.

Kunichika smiled and said, “I’m not certain. Something beyond translation.”

I caught his eye as we climbed back into the car. He smiled and said, “I did tell you I was a jack-of-all-trades.”

We set off with renewed vigour, it seemed. Kunichika turned to Honey and said, “We should not stay on this road for too long.”

I fell into a thin sleep with my head resting on Johnny’s shoulder. In my sleep I felt the rolling and swaying of the car. I did not dream; my head was filled instead with the voices of the people around me, yet, curiously, I remained asleep. I did not wake until we reached the grounds of the rest house.

THIS REST HOUSE is exceedingly comfortable, and I am reluctant to leave it—yet we must if we are to catch our boat this evening. I have often glimpsed these rest houses, and have always wanted to stay in one, to be a foreign traveller, stopping en route at these simple inns that punctuate the journey to the far North. When we arrived late yesterday afternoon, I went immediately to my room to enjoy the view. The house is situated on a hill, nestled among ancient shade-giving trees. Beyond the flame of the forest outside my window the land falls away and then undulates gently towards the coast. The Hainanese couple who run this place say that on a clear day the sea is easily visible; sometimes it appears so near that some guests have attempted to walk to it. But there has been so much cloud in the sky that I have not glimpsed the ocean; rain seems close at hand.

Let me describe this room and why it appeals to me so much. It is large, with a smooth concrete floor painted the colour of clay. The furnishings are sparse—a bed, a dressing table, and a small writing desk. The windows are so large that wherever I am in the room I am able to take in the view. After Johnny went down for breakfast this morning, I pulled the mosquito net aside and lay in bed gazing outside. The air was cool and the light soft. That was when it struck me: this is the first time I have been on a trip on my own—that is to say, unaccompanied by my parents. Even the most timid of my excursions have always been chaperoned. I do not know why I have not realised the significance of this trip before, or why I have been allowed to venture forth in this manner. Perhaps they believe—justifiably—that marriage makes a woman so undesirable that she will be safe from the murky dangers of men.

“You seem in high spirits today,” Kunichika said when I ran into him on the landing.

“Do I?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I had dressed hastily, eager to go outside, and the sleeves of my blouse had gathered uncomfortably at my shoulders. I pulled at them inelegantly.

“Would you care for a stroll?” he asked.

The others were nowhere to be seen; the breakfast room seemed empty. I nodded.

It was the most glorious morning I could recall. Everything was perfectly still, the air touched with the faint crispness of dawn. The light appeared to my eyes like syrup. I had never noticed such a thing before. I wanted to swim in it.

“The light is remarkable,” Kunichika said. “It illuminates everything.” It was as if he had read my mind.

“One can see everything with utter clarity,” I said. “There are no shadows, nothing is hidden.”

“Is it too sentimental a thing to say,” he said, and then paused.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He smiled, blushing a little.

I stopped walking and turned to him. His hesitant smile induced me to smile too. “What were you going to say?”

“No, please—I am embarrassed to say it. I am embarrassed even to think it.” He walked a few paces ahead of me and paused under the boughs of a giant fig tree. On the perfectly clipped lawn, he looked like an ornamental statue.

I went to him and said, “Now, Professor, you must tell me.”

He hesitated and frowned. “Only if you call me by my name.”

I laughed and cleared my throat theatrically. “Please tell me what you were going to say—Mamoru.”

He turned away and gazed at the valley before us. I could not see his face, but he seemed lost in contemplation. In a quiet voice, he said, “On such mornings one feels as if life is—that life
begins
again. You feel—one feels—that whatever else one has previously done in one’s life ceases to matter. All you have done wrong can be put right, all you have lost can be regained. Your slate is wiped clean. It’s as if someone says to you,‘Here is a new beginning.’ ” He turned around and caught my eye. He shrugged and looked at his feet, laughing awkwardly. “I’m sorry—it’s silly sentimentalism, I know. Please, ignore what I said. Academics are prone to such emotional lapses!”

“It isn’t silly at all,” I said. “Not in the least.” For the briefest moment I was seized by an urge to speak endlessly—what of, I do not know. A sudden wave of unbounded optimism swelled in me, and for a second I thought I would reach out to touch him. But the moment passed, and I fell silent once more. Finally, I said, “If only it could be so.”

“If only what could be so?”

“If only life could be like that—if only we
could
begin again. Wouldn’t that be nice? If only mornings like these weren’t just an illusion.”

He took my hand and pressed it firmly between his palms. “Snow, it can happen. Life
is
a palimpsest. You must believe it.”

We continued our stroll and talked about the Valley, about the trees, the rivers, and people. I spoke about my childhood—I saw all these things from afar, but my parents never allowed me to venture close to them. I knew the names of all the trees, I knew what they looked like, yet I never knew the smell of their sap or how their leaves felt to the touch. Lying awake at night, I came to recognise the calls of certain animals, and many times I saw wild boar and
rusa
bucks—but only dead ones tribal hunters brought to the house to sell for meat. I was familiar, of course, with the people of the Valley—they spoke to me respectfully when they visited the house, and I replied with equal propriety. I never knew, of course, what they ate when they were at home, or what they said to their children at night, or how they loved their wives in the morning. I spent my whole life, it seems, observing the world from my window. And then Johnny appeared on that rain-sodden day.

“You must have been very in love with him,” Mamoru said.

I did not answer.

“Has he changed much since you married?” he continued. “It is often said that nothing changes a man more than marriage.”

I laughed. “On the contrary. He hasn’t changed at all.”

“And is that . . . a bad thing?”

Again I did not answer.

“Your husband is an interesting man,” he said as we walked down a slope towards a cream-painted shelter.