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

of his hand. ‘There were other prisoners there, Japanese officers, waiting for their sentences to be carried out. Some of them wept when they went to their execution. One by one they were taken away, until I was the only one left. And then, one evening, the guards came for me.’ He stopped stroking his cheek. ‘They took me out of my cell. I thought I was going to be hanged. But they let me go. Magnus was waiting for me at the prison gates. I had been inside for two months.’
    The butterfly flew off, its wings flashing black and yellow semaphores. The gardener drummed the table with his fingers. Eventually he rose to his feet. ‘Come, I will show you part of the garden.’
    ‘Our tea will get cold.’ I had hoped to get a decision from him and he had not given me any indication whether he would accept my offer.
    ‘We are not likely to run out of tea in this part of the world,’ he said, ‘are we?’

    * * *
    He collected an old solar topi from a hat-stand by the front door and led me outside. We skirted the edge of the unfilled pond; I noticed that the bottom was already lined with hardened clay.
    Further into the garden, a Tamil coolie was stacking rocks coated in a batter of mud and broken-off roots into a wheelbarrow. ‘ Selamat pagi, Tuan, ’ he greeted Aritomo. The gardener examined the man’s work and shook his head, his irritation obvious. The Tamil spoke barely any English and Aritomo was unable to tell him exactly what he wanted done. I stepped between them and translated his instructions into Malay. Aritomo gave me more detailed directions to convey to the man, interrogating him until he was satisfied that he was understood precisely.
    ‘He will still make a mess of things,’ Aritomo said as the Tamil pushed the wheelbarrow away.
    ‘How many workers do you have here?’
    ‘I used to have nine,’ Aritomo replied. ‘When the war ended they went to Kuala Lumpur.
    Now I have only five of them working for me. They have no interest or ability in gardening. And as you have seen, they cannot understand my instructions.’
    ‘You’ve been here eleven years,’ I said, gazing around us. ‘I would have thought that the garden would’ve been completed by now.’
    ‘I am making some changes to it,’ he replied. ‘The soldiers who came for me took pleasure in wrecking my garden. For a long time I wondered if there was a point to my restoring it. I did not want another group of soldiers to destroy it again. I put off the repairs until a few months ago.’
    ‘These changes, how long will it take to finish them?’
    ‘Probably another year.’ He stopped to examine a row of heliconia flowers. ‘There are some new ideas I want to realise.’
    ‘That seems a long time just to finish a garden.’
    ‘Then it is clear that you know very little. Rocks have to be dug up and moved. Trees have to be taken out and replanted. Everything has to be done by hand – everything .’ Aritomo snapped off the twigs of some low-hanging branches. ‘So you see, I cannot accept your commission.’
    I was wracked by bitter disappointment. ‘I’m willing to wait a year,’ I said eventually.
    ‘Even two years, if that’s what you need.’
    ‘I am not interested in your proposal.’ He strode to a large boulder hulking by a hedge; I followed him a second later. The stone came up to my hips. Set into its flat surface was a hollow the size of a small washbasin. Water trickled from a bamboo flume, filling the hollow before overflowing down the sides. A bamboo dipper lay beside the natural basin. Aritomo scooped it into the water and drank from it, passing it to me when he was done. I hesitated, then took it from him.
    The water was icy, tasting of moss and minerals, of rain and mist. Bending to replace the dipper, my eyes were drawn across the water’s surface to a gap in the hedge, through which a solitary mountain peak in the distance could be seen. The sight of it was so unexpected, so perfectly framed by the leaves,