Hong’s love of gardens kept us alive when we were in the camp,’ I said.
‘How did it keep you alive?’
‘We escaped into make-believe worlds,’ I said. ‘Some imagined themselves building the house of their dreams, or constructing a yacht. The more details they could include, the better they were insulated from the horrors around them. One Eurasian woman – the wife of a Dutch engineer at Shell – this woman wanted to look at her stamp collection again. It gave her the will to go on living. Another man recited the titles of all of Shakespeare’s plays again and again, in the order they had been written, when he was being tortured.’ My throat dried up and I took a swallow of tea. ‘Yun Hong kept our spirits up by talking about the gardens we had visited in Kyoto, 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 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
