Free The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng Page A

describing even the smallest details to me. “This is how we’ll survive,” she told me, “this is how we’ll walk out of this camp.”’
    The sun was breaking free of the mountains. Over the distant treetops, a flock of birds unspooled into a black wavering thread, pulling across the sky.
    ‘One day, a guard beat me for not bowing properly. He wouldn’t stop, but just kept hitting me. I found myself in a garden. There were flowering trees everywhere, the smell of water…’ I paused. ‘I realised that where I had been was a combination of all the gardens I had visited in Kyoto. I told Yun Hong about it. That was the moment we started to create our own garden, in here,’ I said, tapping a finger on the side of my head. ‘Day by day we added details to it. The garden became our refuge. Inside our minds, we were free.’
    He touched the envelope on the table. ‘You mentioned that you worked as a researcher for the War Crimes Tribunal.’
    ‘I wanted to ensure that those who were responsible were punished. I wanted to see that justice was done.’
    ‘You think I am a fool? It was not all about justice.’
    ‘It was the only way that I would be allowed to examine the court documents and official records,’ I said. ‘I was searching for information about my camp. I wanted to find where my sister was buried.’
    His eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t know where your camp was located?’
    ‘We were blindfolded when the Japs – when the Japanese – transported us there. It was somewhere deep in the jungle. That was all we knew.’
    ‘The other survivors from your camp, what happened to them?’
    A butterfly trembled over the cannas by the verandah. It finally alighted on a leaf, its wings closing together in prayer. ‘There were no other survivors.’
    ‘You were the only one?’ He looked at me as though I was trying to deceive him.
    I held his stare, not swerving away from it. ‘I was the only one.’
    For a while we did not speak. Pushing the tray to one side, I untied the twine around the tube of papers I had brought with me and unrolled it on the table, weighing down the edges with our cups. ‘My grandmother left a piece of land in KL to Yun Hong and me. It’s about six acres.’
    I pointed to the first document, a map from the Land Office. ‘It’s a short walk up the hill from the Lake Gardens. The climate is too hot and humid for an authentic Japanese garden, I know,’ I added quickly, ‘but perhaps we can use the local flora instead. Here, I’ve taken photographs of the place. You can have some idea of what the terrain looks like, what needs to be done.’
    He gave only a cursory glance at the map and the photographs. ‘Your sister was the one who dreamed of creating gardens, not you.’
    ‘Yun Hong lies in an unmarked grave, Mr Nakamura. This is for her, a garden in her memory.’ I foraged among my thoughts for the words to persuade him, but found none. ‘This is the only thing I can do for her.’
    ‘It makes me uncomfortable – the fact that you are asking me to do this because of what happened to your sister – and to you.’
    ‘It shouldn’t, if you weren’t involved in the Occupation.’ I spoke more sharply than I had intended.
    The line of his jaw became accentuated. ‘If I had, would I not have been hanged? Perhaps by you even?’
    ‘Not every guilty Japanese was charged, much less punished.’
    Some element in the air between us changed, as though a wind that had been blowing gently had been come to an abrupt stillness.
    ‘British soldiers came here one day, not long after the surrender,’ he said. ‘They dragged me out of my house and made me kneel on the ground, there. Just there.’ He pointed to a patch of grass. ‘They clubbed me. When I fell over and tried to get up, they kicked me, again and again. Then they took me away.’
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘The prison in Ipoh. They locked me in a cell. They never charged me with anything.’ He stroked his cheek with the back