fourteen years. . .’
Through the high, dusty windows I saw the corner of the cricket field across the road and, further away, the Selangor Club, its mock-Tudor facade reminding me of the bungalows in Cameron Highlands. The clock in the tower above the central portico chimed, its languid pulse beating through the walls of the courtroom. I turned my wrist slightly and checked the time: eleven minutes past three; the clock was, as ever, reliably out, its punctuality stolen by lightning years ago.
‘. . . few of us here today are aware that she was a prisoner in a Japanese internment camp when she was nineteen,’ said Abdullah.
The advocates murmured among themselves, observing me with heightened interest. I had never spoken of the three years I had spent in the camp to anyone. I tried not to think about it as I went about my days, and mostly I succeeded. But occasionally the memories still found their way in, through a sound I heard, a word someone uttered, or a smell I caught in the street.
‘When the war ended,’ the Chief Justice continued, ‘Judge Teoh worked as a research clerk in the War Crimes Tribunal while waiting for admission to read Law at Girton College, Cambridge. After being called to the Bar, she returned to Malaya in 1949 and worked as a Deputy Public Prosecutor for nearly two years. . .’
In the front row below me sat four elderly British advocates, their suits and ties almost as old as them. Along with a number of rubber planters and civil servants, they had chosen to stay on in Malaya after its independence, thirty years ago. These aged Englishmen had the forlorn air of pages torn from an old and forgotten book.
The Chief Justice cleared his throat and I looked at him. ‘. . . Judge Teoh was not due to retire for another two years, so you will no doubt imagine our surprise when, only two months ago, she told us she intended to leave the Bench. Her written judgments are known for their clarity and elegant turns-of-phrase. . .’ His words flowered, became more laudatory. I was far away in another time, thinking of Aritomo and his garden in the mountains.
The speech ended. I brought my mind back to the courtroom, hoping that no one had noticed the potholes in my attention; it would not do to appear distracted at my own retirement ceremony.
I gave a short, simple address to the audience and then Abdullah brought the ceremony to a close. I had invited a few well-wishers from the Bar Council, my colleagues and the senior partners in the city’s larger law firms for a small reception in my chambers. A reporter asked me a few questions and took photographs. After the guests left, Azizah went around the room, gathering up the cups and the paper plates of half eaten food.
‘Take those curry puffs with you,’ I said, ‘and that box of cakes. Don’t waste food.’
‘I know-lah. You always tell me that.’ She packed the food away and said, ‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘You can go home. I’ll lock up.’ It was what I usually said to her at the end of every court term. ‘And thank you, Azizah. For everything.’
She shook the creases out of my black robe, hung it on the coat-stand and turned to look at me. ‘It wasn’t easy working for you all these years, Puan, but I’m glad I did.’ Tears gleamed in her eyes. ‘The lawyers – you were difficult with them, but they’ve always respected you. You listened to them.’
‘That’s the duty of a judge, Azizah. To listen. So many judges seem to forget that.’
‘Ah, but you weren’t listening earlier, when Tuan Mansor was going on and on. I was looking at you.’
‘He was talking about my life, Azizah.’ I smiled at her. ‘Hardly much there I don’t know about already, don’t you think?’
‘Did the orang Jepun do that to you?’ She pointed to my hands. ‘Maaf,’ she apologised, ‘but . . . I was always too scared to ask you. You know, I’ve never seen you without your gloves.’
I rotated my left wrist slowly, turning an invisible doorknob. ‘One good thing about growing old,’ I said, looking at the part of the glove where two of its fingers had been cut off and stitched over. ‘Unless they look closely, people probably think I’m just a vain old woman, hiding my arthritis.’
We stood there, both of us uncertain of how to conduct our partings. Then she reached out and grasped my other hand, pulling me into an embrace before I could react, enveloping me like dough around a stick. Then she let go of me, collected her handbag and left.
I looked around. The bookshelves were bare. My things had already been packed away and sent to my house in Bukit Tunku, flotsam sucked back to sea by the departing tide. Boxes of Malayan Law Journals and All England Reports were stacked in a corner for donation to the Bar Library. Only a single shelf of MLJs remained, their spines stamped in gold with the year in which the cases were reported. Azizah had promised to come in tomorrow and pack them away.
I went to a picture hanging on a wall, a watercolour of the home I had grown up in. My sister had painted it. It was the only work of hers I owned, the only one I had ever come across after the war. I lifted it off its hook and set it down by the door.
The stacks of manila folders tied with pink ribbons that normally crowded my desk had been reassigned to the other judges; the table seemed larger than usual when I sat down in my chair. The wooden stick was still lying where I had left it. Beyond the half-opened windows, dusk was summoning the crows to their roosts. The birds thickened the foliage of the angsana trees lining the road, filling the streets with their babble. Lifting the telephone receiver, I began dialling and then stopped, unable to recall the rest of the numbers. I paged through my address book, rang the main house in Majuba Tea Estate and asked to speak to Frederik Pretorius when a maid answered. I did not have to wait long.
‘Yun Ling?’ he said when he came on the line, sounding slightly out of breath.
‘I’m coming to Yugiri.’
Silence pressed down on the line. ‘When?’
‘This Friday.’ I paused. It had been seven months since we had last spoken to each other. ‘Will you tell Ah Cheong to have the house ready for me?’
‘He’s always kept it ready for you,’ Frederik replied. ‘But I’ll tell him. Stop by at the estate on the way. We can have some tea. I’ll drive you to Yugiri.’
‘I haven’t forgotten how to get there, Frederik.’
Another stretch of silence connected us. ‘The monsoon’s over, but there’s still some rain. Drive carefully.’ He hung up.
The call to prayer unwound from the minarets of the Jamek Mosque across the river to echo through the city. I listened to the courthouse empty itself. The sounds were so familiar to me that I had stopped paying attention to them years ago. The wheel of a trolley squeaked as someone – probably Rashid, the registrar’s clerk – pushed the day’s applications to the filing room. The telephone in another judge’s chambers rang for a minute then gave up. The slam of doors echoed through the corridors; I had never realised how loud they sounded.
I picked up my briefcase and shook it once. It was lighter than usual. I packed my court robe into it. At the door I turned around to look at my chambers. I gripped the edge of the doorframe, realising that I would never again set foot in this room. The weakness passed. I switched off the lights but continued to stand there, gazing into the shadows. I picked up my sister’s watercolour and closed the door, working the handle a few times to make sure it was properly locked. Then I made my way along the dimly-lit
