The Harmony Silk Factory (42 page)

“Bougainvillea,” someone said, “that’s a nice flower—and definitely native. Why can’t we just have that on the verandah, instead of this—what is this thing?” He pulled my sketch toward him. “Passi-flo-ra.”

“Bougainvillea,” I said, stressing the French vowels. “Does it sound like a Malay name to you? Brought here from Brazil by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. So sorry to disappoint. Why should we have passionflower? Because it’s perfectly suited to this climate. It’s bolder than bougainvillea and doesn’t shed its petals like cheap confetti. And since we are, after all, living in a house run by the Church, I thought it fitting that we should have a flower that reminds us of the crown of thorns. Every time we take tea, we shall look at it and think of Christ’s suffering.”

Quiet, uncertain glances.

“Bunga raya,”
Gecko said. “That’s our national flower, so you can’t goddam tell us that’s not native.”

“Most botanists think that particular strain of hibiscus originated from China, hence its common name, Chinese rose. No one knows for sure, though, but who cares? It looks like some strange half-evaginated hermaphrodite genitalia, gloriously labial, with a thin stamen that droops like a failed phallus—the whole thing desperately vulgar.”

Uproar.

“Okay okay okay,” Alvaro said, emollient as ever. “I’m sure Peter’s only joking. Aren’t you, Peter?”

“Of course,” I said. “I was only trying to illustrate a point.”

“And what was your point?”

I sighed. “That things thought of as native aren’t always what they seem, and that we shouldn’t be constrained by ideas of what belongs where. Some might say, for example, that since this is where I have lived for almost three-quarters of my life,
I
may be considered native.”

A deep silence fell over the table. I thought that perhaps finally I had won my battle. But then a chair scraped against the floor and an obese old troll stood up. Errol was his name; I had barely spoken to him in the past. “You are not native,” he said, his fat voice suffused with grease. “You just go
fuck-off
back home.”

As I left the room I heard Alvaro playing umpire amidst the melee. “Okay, okay, calm down,” he said as I walked along the darkened corridor back to my room, where I sat alone before the open shutters. The sea breeze had calmed and the air in the room was still. I lit a mosquito coil and placed it by my bed to keep the tiny winged vampires away. In the dark I could not see the flotsam that lay scattered on the grey, muddy sea. At night only the light of fishing boats is visible on the purple-black waters, and the sea almost looks beautiful. I lay down on my bed, watching the jewelled specks of light on the faint horizon. I did not fall asleep for quite some time.

THERE WAS NOTHING this island could not offer us. The forest was rich with wild mango, custard apple, breadfruit, and coconut. Huge shoals of tiny silvery fish shimmered in the shallows; they did not swim away when we cast our net over them, but swum lazily in different directions, flashing iridescent in the sun.

“This place is very strange,” Johnny said. “It’s an island, but somehow doesn’t feel like an island.” We were out walking together, exploring the low shoulder of hills that rose above the sheltered bay in which we had camped.

“What on earth do you mean?” I laughed.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “The trees, the streams—everything seems perfect but wrong. It feels as if we could live here forever and yet . . . oh I don’t know.”

“I expect you’re still exhausted after the storm—and everything else,” I said. He looked better now, and his humour had improved immeasurably. He looked fit again, walking ahead of me on the cool, damp forest trails. His eyes were shadowed by dark circles of fatigue, it was true, but his limbs had recovered their litheness, and his stride was calm and steady.

“I don’t like the sea,” he said. “I can’t swim.”

“I can certainly testify to that.”

“Last thing I remember,” he said, turning to look at me with a faint smile, “you weren’t doing so well yourself.”

“Oh, the cheek of it!” I cried as we negotiated a slippery uphill path. “The cheek of it, the cheek of it. I was enjoying standing on the deck. Don’t you know the laws of physics don’t apply to me? I would have withstood anything that storm could have thrown at me. Like Idomeneo, I would have survived even if we had been shipwrecked. My catlike reflexes would have seen me through—but no, you came hurtling towards me, determined to spoil the moment.”

“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 already 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.