The Harmony Silk Factory (33 page)

Much later, I woke in darkness and silence. I thought I had heard a knock at the door, but when I opened it no one was there. A plate of food had been left for me, protected by a piece of muslin and a fly net. I felt a dull throb of hunger in my belly, but when I unwrapped my promising little picnic I found that it contained nothing but some rice and those vegetables, desecrated by shrimp paste. I lifted a spoonful of rice to my mouth, carefully leaving aside the more offensive items on the plate, but I found that the rice had become infected by the sour, rancid smell. I simply could not eat it.

Rain began to fall, heavy drops thudding one by one on the tiled roofs before gathering into a steady, hypnotic drumming. I had not expected rain: it was, after all, at the very height of the dry season. The noise outside—a strange and intense hushing as the rain rustled the leaves on the trees—soothed my ears. I lay on the side of the bed next to the open window so that my skin would catch the odd droplet of moisture, blown astray by the swelling breeze. Lightning illuminated the distant skies, and I fell asleep to the comfortable rumble of thunder. It was my first true equatorial downpour.

That night I knew my life was about to change. For many years afterwards I relived the quivering, insistent sensations of that particular storm-washed evening and wondered if I had merely imagined it all. But now, at the end of my days, I see that it was true. Although the passing of time has tried to muddy it, the clarity of that night remains with me. Even in my sleep I sensed that I was poised on the brink of something epochal. It was not—I am utterly clear about this—my Road to Damascus, but rather a gradual, gentle realisation that by the morning, the course of my life would be altered irrevocably.

When, therefore, I was awakened by a thundering that shook the timbers of the guest house, I knew at once it was not the storm: it was the start of the rest of my life. I lay in bed with my eyes open for a few seconds, listening to the cries of the people running into the street. As I sat up, there was another explosion. I felt it trembling in my rib cage. Out on the street, a small child lay crouching in a doorway with her hands on her ears. The rain was falling hard; shimmering pools had formed in the muddied road. In the distance, about half a mile away, a spire of black smoke rose into the sky. I dressed hurriedly and joined the throng of people hurrying in the direction of the smoke. No one spoke; we merely splashed our way through the rain and the red mud, guided by the charcoal cloud that hung in the air. At last I saw the inferno: a giant mass of flame engulfing a building that was collapsing, timber by timber, as I approached it. A large crowd had gathered on a grassy bank nearby, and as I pushed through I became aware that they too were not speaking. Nothing was audible but the sound of the same rain which had washed through my sleep. At last I found what lay at the heart of this silent congregation: a pair of bodies, one shielding the other. I moved closer and saw that they were two men. The younger man, naked to the waist, lowered his face slowly toward the elder’s; he hesitated for a moment before pressing his lips firmly onto the old man’s weakly gasping mouth. I held my breath as I watched this young hero breathe life into the pale and lifeless body. It was some time before the old man, motionless on the wet grass, began to cough, wheezing as he heaved air into his lungs. He opened his eyes and stared at the sky. The younger man withdrew, exhausted from his exertions. He lifted his head to look at the crowd around him. Even before I saw his face I knew, with absolute certainty, that it was Johnny.

 

 

 

 

THE BROWN SHRIKE,
Lanius cristatus,
is a noisy and quarrelsome bird. It spends its summers feasting on insects in Siberia and Manchuria before journeying south to spend its winters infesting the countryside around this House. From morning till dusk they squeal, chatter, and fight in the garden, flitting across my field of vision so as to make it impossible for me to concentrate for any length of time. Now that the other residents have realised the seriousness of my undertaking, they pester me constantly with requests to devise a planting scheme that will encourage these violent hordes of irritating little birds to remain longer in the environs of the House. Unlike me, they seem actually to enjoy the sight of these winged pests.

“What about a birdbath?” Gecko trilled. “Right outside the dining hall window, so we can watch them whilst we breakfast. Or a table with rice and breadcrumbs and groundnuts on it.”

“No,” I said. “How common.”

“What beautiful red heads they have,” Alvaro said, lowering his binoculars. “I hope you are going to have lots of tall grasses, and maybe put in some big rocks too. They seem to like perching on the stones and reeds by the paddy field down the road.”

“Do you want me to re-create the Steppes just for these little buggers?”

“It’s not only for them,” Gecko chirped. “There are lots of other birds too.”

“Look here,” I said, “this is a garden, not a bloody bird sanctuary. Its primary purpose is to provide pleasure to humans. It isn’t a playground for truculent birds.”

“You told me that this garden—any garden—is a re-creation of the Garden of Eden,” said Alvaro. “It is the recapturing of our Paradise Lost, you said. Those were your exact words.”

“My dear boy,” I replied, “I think I may have been misinterpreted.”

“No, those were the words you used,” he insisted, shaking his head like a stubborn child.

“Well then, you’ve been too literal in your understanding of what I was trying to express.”

He looked puzzled. “Explain it to me again, please.”

“No,” I said, gathering my sketches and notebooks. “If you haven’t already understood my philosophy, a lengthy exegesis is unlikely to provide further illumination. The bottom line is: no birdbath.”

I retired to my room, where I paused briefly to reflect on—and, I must admit, admire—the strength of my resolve. I felt absolutely justified in standing firm on the matter. Although harmony with nature is of considerable importance in planning a garden, it must never be allowed to obscure what lies at the heart of the design: the salvation of the human spirit. In creating a garden, we acquire, by force, a patch of land from the jungle; we mould it so that it becomes an oasis amidst the wilderness. It is an endless struggle. Turn our backs for a moment and the darkness of the forest begins its insidious invasion of our tiny haven. The plants that we insert—artificially, it must be noted, for no garden is a work of Mother Nature—must not only provide shelter for the soul, they must be able to absorb and then disperse the creeping darkness of the jungle around us. The decorations do not merely adorn, they protect. They create a place where, at the end of our lives, we may find peace.

And no peace will ever be found amidst those infuriating little birds.

THOSE WHO TRULY KNOW the jungle do not invite it into their homes. They fight to keep it from their dwelling places, fiercely patrolling the boundaries; they understand that the threat from the denizens of the tangled forest is constant. The jungle is alive and it is dangerous. This was one of the very first things I learnt when I came to the Valley, when Johnny took me on a walk across the Cameron Highlands. Since our reacquaintance in Kampar, he seemed exceedingly keen to show me the Valley, and we had been on several long walks already. Each time the drill would be the same: Johnny would appear at my guest house, where he would be greeted by the towkay with considerable enthusiasm (from my room, I could hear Johnny’s polite, protracted refusals to join the family for tea); he would then appear at my door, wearing a smile of undimmed delight. Always, he held a book, and although the choice of reading material sometimes changed, he clearly had his favourites. Shelley, as I have explained, was one—“shows impeccable taste,” I told him—and Dornford Yates another. Our conversation on those first walks was always the same. He asked the questions, I answered them.

“What is the meaning of ‘expostulation’?” “Who was Ozymandias, actually?” “Was Hamlet really crazy?” “What is the difference between ‘toilet’ and ‘lavatory’?”

He drank my answers as if quenching an ancient thirst. They were all that he needed to sustain himself on these walks, it seemed. He never drank from the flask of boiled water we carried with us; all he wanted to do was ask and listen. He was inexhaustible.

This particular walk in the high, cool hills above Tanah Rata was the longest yet: seventeen miles, Johnny said, all the way through the Camerons, up to the peak of Beremban, taking in Robinson Falls. The prospect of an entire day treading through the prehistoric jungles of the Valley filled me with such naked joy that for the first few miles I easily kept up with Johnny. We walked along undulating paths that ran along the bottom of steep slopes clad with tea hedges. The bright green of these bushes blanketed the valleys so thickly that I almost believed I could plunge into it and not be hurt. Beyond these low-lying slopes rose the spine of the hills, huge and silent, covered in ancient rainforest. The morning sun fell on every undulation: a softly bronzed valley painted with zebra-striped shadows.

The nature of our conversation up to that point was entirely predictable.

“Why do people in England have to change into special clothes for dinner?” Johnny asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you wear a ‘black tie,’ ” he said. “What is that?” I noticed that in the jungle he spoke freely, and without the hesitation that made his English seem stilted and primitive in Kampar.

“My dear boy,” I replied, “I fear you have been paying too much attention to Dornford Yates.”

“So you don’t wear a black tie, then?” he said. A look of mild disappointment settled on his face.

“Of course I do,” I said quickly. I cannot fully explain the fabrication that followed. I can only say that I wanted desperately for the smile to return to Johnny’s face, for him to be thrilled and mystified once more. And so I continued: “I am famous for my sartorial sensibilities. I have even been known to dress for dinner when I am at home on my own! Did you know, a great ballet dancer once said that he wished his shirts were as elegant as mine. He saw me in a restaurant and crossed the room to pay me that compliment. The next day I selected a few of my less-favoured shirts—made by Charvet in Paris—and had them sent round to his dressing room. I daresay he was mightily pleased with them.”

He smiled broadly and turned to look at me with his all-absorbing eyes. “Really?” he breathed. “What was this person’s name?”

“Nijinsky,” I said without hesitation, knowing he would not know any better.

He continued picking his way through the trees, negotiating tree roots and fallen logs as easily as I might have strolled through St. James’s Park on a summer’s day.

“In fact,” I continued, “I have not one but two dinner jackets with me back at the guest house. It’s one of my rules of travel: never be underdressed. I was thinking, though, that perhaps you should have one of them. A man should always be appropriately attired, after all.”

He looked shocked at first, uncomprehending. I made my offer again, and he accepted it with a silent smile. Thereafter he began to fire questions rapidly, speaking with a looseness I had never before seen in an adult. This had a curious effect on me. My answers became more and more elaborate, happily gilded with stories from a glittering past I never knew I had. He seemed to draw energy from these tales, laughing loudly whilst striding powerfully ahead of me. I tried hard to keep up, but the effort of explaining, inter alia, Jacob’s Ladder and the devotion of Mary Magdalene was too much for me, and my breath became truncated and painful. We stopped in a glade by a shallow valley filled with rhododendrons. My vision swam with multicoloured shapes.

“Rest awhile,” Johnny said. He poured some water onto a small piece of cloth and offered it to me. I placed it on my neck and caught my breath. The landscape around us seemed bizarre in its variety. Part tropical, part temperate, wholly perplexing. All manner of epiphytes clung to the trees: bird’s-nest ferns, many-headed orchids, twisting vines with flowers the colour of hot coals. We were in the heart of the forest now, tiny creatures dwarfed by the towering columns around us.

“What’s that tree called?” I asked, pointing.

He shrugged.

“That one?” I asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“That one’s teak,” I said.

“We call it
jati,
” he said.

I walked to the edge of the clearing, listening to the cries of hawks.

“
Jati
is what we use to build houses,” he said.

“Isn’t your house made from teak?”

He laughed. “That is my father-in-law’s house—but yes, it is teak. Someday I too will own a house made from teak.”

“Was your shop made from teak?” I said, continuing to gaze at the thick canopy of leaves above me.

He laughed suddenly, a different laugh this time. It sounded cold and sad. “My shop was destroyed. By fire. And now I live in the house of my wife’s father.”

I had just begun to turn to look at Johnny when I felt something on my shoulder. Just for an instant: a blunt thud accompanied by a sharp, pricking pain in my neck. Johnny’s eyes widened and he ran towards some bushes, picking up a long stick as he did so. In a single fluid movement he brought the stick down hard into the earth; he lifted his arm again and repeated this several times until finally I saw that he had killed a snake. A small one, dull green in colour. Its bloodied body hung limply over the stick. My neck began to throb gently. Johnny came to me and said, “I thought it was a viper, but it’s not. This snake is only slightly poisonous.”

“
Slightly
poisonous?” I said, my voice constricting into a whisper. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll be fine. It didn’t bite you properly.” He came very close to me and held my neck. I could not see what he was doing. I could barely feel the flick of his knife on my skin as he made a tiny incision. He squeezed the cut so gently I could not feel anything apart from a spreading warmth on my neck; and then he wet a thin towel with some water from the flask and pressed it to my numbed skin.