‘I’d like to use it,’ Frederik says. ‘I’ll pay you, of course – royalties, I mean.’
Aritomo had bequeathed Yugiri and the copyright in all his literary and artistic works to me. With rare exceptions I have never allowed anyone to reproduce them. ‘Use it,’ I say. ‘I don’t want any payment.’
He does not hide his surprise.
‘How is Emily?’ I cut him off before he speaks. ‘She must be what, eighty-eight?’ I try to remember how old his aunt had been when I met her all those years ago.
‘She’ll have a fit if she hears that. She turned eighty-five this year.’ He hesitates. ‘She’s not well. Some days her memory would shame an elephant’s, but there are also days. . .’ His voice tapers away into a sigh.
‘I’ll see her once I’ve settled in.’ I know that Emily, like so many older Chinese, places great importance on having a younger person visit them first, to give them face.
‘You’d better. I’ve told her you’re back.’
I wave a hand out to the garden. ‘Your workers have been taking good care of Yugiri.’
‘Judges aren’t supposed to lie.’ The smile on Frederik’s face sinks away a second later. ‘We both know my boys don’t have the skills to maintain it. And besides – as I keep telling you – I honestly don’t have the knowledge – or the interest, or the time – to make sure they do their work properly. The garden needs your attention.’ He stops, then says, ‘By the way, I’ve decided to make some changes to Majuba’s garden.’
‘What kind of changes?’
‘I’ve hired a landscape gardener to help me,’ Frederik says. ‘Vimalya started her gardening service in Tanah Rata a year ago. She’s very much a fan of indigenous gardens.’
‘Following the trend.’ I do not bother to sieve the disdain from my voice.
His face twitches with annoyance. ‘We’re going back to everything nature intended. We’re using plants and trees native to the region. We’ll let them grow the way they would have done in the wild, with as little human assistance – or interference – as possible.’
‘You’re removing all the pine trees in Majuba? And the firs, the eucalyptuses . . . the roses, the irises . . . the . . . the strelitzias?’
‘They’re alien. All of them.’
‘So is every single tea bush here. So am I. And so are you, Mr Pretorius. Especially you.’
It is none of my concern, I know, but for almost sixty years, ever since Frederik’s uncle Magnus established Majuba Tea Estate, its formal gardens have been admired and loved. Visitors have been coming from all over the country to enjoy an English garden in the tropics. They walk among the meticulously shaped hedges and voluptuous flowerbeds, the herbaceous borders and the roses Emily planted. It pains me to hear that the garden is to be transformed, made to appear as though it forms part of the tropical rainforest crowding in around us – overgrown and unkempt and lacking any order.
‘I’ve told you before, a long time ago – Majuba’s gardens are too artificial. The older I get, the more I don’t believe in having nature controlled. Trees should be allowed to grow as they please.’ Frederik swings his gaze to the garden. ‘If it were up to me, all of this would be taken out.’
‘What is gardening but the controlling and perfecting of nature?’ I am aware my voice is rising. ‘When you talk about “indigenous gardening”, or whatever it’s called, you already have man involved. You dig out beds, you chop down trees, and you bring in seeds and cuttings. It all sounds very much planned to me.’
‘Gardens like Yugiri’s are deceptive. They’re false. Everything here has been thought out and shaped and built. We’re sitting in one of the most artificial places you can find.’
Sparrows rise from the grass into the trees, like fallen leaves returning to their branches. I think about those elements of gardening Frederik is opposed to, aspects so loved by the Japanese – the techniques of controlling nature, perfected over a thousand years. Was it because they lived in lands so regularly rocked by earthquakes and natural calamities that they sought to tame the world around them? My eyes move to the sitting room, to the bonsai of a pine tree that Ah Cheong has so faithfully looked after. The immense trunk the pine would have grown into is now constrained to a size that would not look out of place on a scholar’s desk, trained to the desired shape by copper wire coiled around its branches. There are some people, like Frederik, who might feel that such practices are misguided, like trying to wield Heaven’s powers on earth. And yet it was only in the carefully planned and created garden of Yugiri that I had found a sense of order and calm and even, for a brief moment of time, forgetfulness.
‘Someone is coming to see me this morning,’ I say. ‘From Tokyo. He’s going to look at Aritomo’s woodblock prints.’
‘You’re selling them? Are you short of money?’
His concern touches me, cools my anger. In addition to being a garden designer, Aritomo had also been a woodblock artist. After I admitted, in an unguarded moment during an interview, that he had left me a collection of his woodblock prints, connoisseurs in Japan tried to convince me to part with them, or to put them on exhibition. I have always refused, much to their resentment; many of them have made it clear that they do not see me as their rightful owner.
‘Professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji contacted me a year ago,’ I say. ‘He wanted to do a book on Aritomo’s prints. I declined to speak to him.’
Frederik’s eyebrows spring up. ‘But he’s coming here today?’
‘I’ve recently made enquiries about him. He’s a historian. A respected one. He’s written articles and books about his country’s actions in the war.’
‘Denying that certain things ever took place, I’m sure.’
‘He has a reputation for being objective.’
‘Why would a historian be interested in Aritomo’s art?’
‘Yoshikawa’s also an authority on Japanese wood-block prints.’
‘Have you read any of his books?’ Frederik asks.
‘They’re all in Japanese.’
‘You speak it, don’t you?’
‘I used to, just enough to get by. Speaking it is one thing, but reading it . . . that’s something else.’
‘In all these years,’ Frederik says, ‘all these years, you’ve never told me what the Japs did to you.’ His voice is mild, but I catch the seam of hurt buried in it.
‘What they did to me, they did to thousands of others.’
I trace the lines of the leaf on the tea packaging with my finger. ‘Aritomo once recited a poem to me, about a stream that had dried up.’ I think for a moment, then say, ‘Though the water has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name.’
‘It’s still hard for you isn’t it?’ Frederik says. ‘Even so long after his death.’
It never fails to disconcert me whenever I hear someone mention Aritomo’s ‘death’, even after all this time. ‘There are days when I think he’s still out there, wandering in the mountains, like one of the Eight Immortals of Taoist legend, a sage making his way home,’ I say. ‘But what amazes me is the fact that there are still people who keep coming here, just because they have heard the stories.’
‘You know, he lived here for – what, thirteen years? Fourteen? He walked the jungle trails almost every day. He knew them better than some of the forestry guides. How could he have gotten lost?’
‘Even monkeys fall from trees.’ I strive to recall where I have heard this, but it eludes me. It will come back to