The Garden of Evening Mists. Tan Twan Eng

I last used it, the sharper turns smoothened out, but there were too many cars and tour buses, too many incontinent lorries leaking gravel and cement as they made their way to another construction site in the highlands.

      It was the last week of September, the rainy season hovering around the mountains. Entering Tanah Rata, the sight of the former Royal Army Hospital standing on a steep rise filled me with a sense of familiar disquiet; Frederik had told me some time ago that it was now a school. A new hotel, with the inevitable mock-Tudor facade, towered behind it. Tanah Rata was no longer a village but a little town, its main street taken over by steam-boat restaurants and tour agencies and souvenir shops. I was glad to leave them all behind me.

      The guard was closing the wrought iron gates of Majuba Tea Estate when I drove past. I kept to the main road for half a mile before realising that I had missed the turn-off to Yugiri. Annoyed with myself, I swung the car around, driving more slowly until I found the turning, hidden by advertisement boards. The laterite road ended a few minutes later at Yugiri’s entrance. A Land Rover was parked by the road side. I stopped my car next to it and got out, kicking the stiffness from my legs.

      The high wall protecting the garden was patched in moss and old water stains. Ferns grew from the cracks. Set into the wall was a door. Nailed by the doorpost was a wooden plaque, a pair of Japanese ideograms burned into it. Below these words was the garden’s name in English: Evening Mists. I felt I was about to enter a place that existed only in the overlapping of air and water, light and time.

      Looking above the top of the wall, my eyes followed the uneven treeline of the ridge rising behind the garden. I found the wooden viewing tower half hidden in the trees, like the crow’s nest of a galleon that had foundered among the branches, trapped by a tide of leaves. A path threaded up into the mountains and for a few moments I stared at it, as if I might glimpse Aritomo walking home. Shaking my head, I pushed the door open, entered the garden and closed it behind me.

      The sounds of the world outside faded away, absorbed into the leaves. I stood there, not moving. For a moment I felt that nothing had changed since I was last here, almost thirty-five years before – the scent of pine resin sticking to the air, the bamboo creaking and knocking in the breeze, the broken mosaic of sunlight scattered over the ground.

      Guided by memory’s compass, I began to walk into the garden. I made one or two wrong turns, but came eventually to the pond. I stopped, the twisting walk through the tunnel of trees heightening the effect of seeing the open sky over the water.

      Six tall, narrow stones huddled into a miniature limestone mountain range in the centre of the pond. On the opposite bank stood the pavilion, duplicated in the water so that it appeared like a paper lantern hanging in mid-air. A willow grew a few feet away from the pavilion’s side, its branches sipping from the pond.

      In the shallows, a grey heron cocked its head at me, one leg poised in the air, like the hand of a pianist who had forgotten the notes to his music. It dropped its leg a second later and speared its beak into the water. Was it a descendant of the one that had made its home here when I first came to Yugiri? Frederik had told me that there was always one in the garden – an unbroken chain of solitary birds. I knew it could not be the same bird from nearly forty years before but, as I watched it, I hoped that it was; I wanted to believe that by entering this sanctuary the heron had somehow managed to slip through the fingers of time.

      To my right and at the top of an incline stood Aritomo’s house. Lights shone from the windows, the kitchen chimney scribbling smoke over the treetops. A man appeared at the front door and walked down the slope towards me. He stopped a few paces away, perhaps to create a space for us to study one another. We are like every single plant and stone and view in the garden, I thought, the distance between one another carefully measured.

      ‘I thought you’d changed your mind,’ he said, closing the space between us.

      ‘The drive was longer than I remembered.’

      ‘Places seem further apart, don’t they, the older we get.’

      At sixty seven years old, Frederik Pretorius had the dignified air given off by an antique art work, secure in the knowledge of its own rarity and value. We had kept in touch over the years, meeting up for drinks or a meal whenever he came down to Kuala Lumpur, but I had always resisted his invitations to visit Cameron Highlands. In the last two or three years his trips to KL had tapered off. Long ago I had realised that he was the only close friend I would ever have.

      ‘The way you were watching that bird just now,’ he said, ‘I felt you were looking back to the past.’

      I turned to look at the heron again. The bird had moved further out into the pond. Mist escaped from the water’s surface, whispers only the wind could catch. ‘I was thinking of the old days.’

      ‘For a second or two there I thought you were about to fade away.’ He stopped, then said, ‘I wanted to call out to you.’

      ‘I’ve retired from the Bench.’ It was the first time I had said it aloud to another person. Something seemed to detach from inside me and crumble away, leaving me less complete than before.

      ‘I saw it in yesterday’s papers,’ said Frederik.

      ‘That photograph they took of me was dreadful, utterly dreadful.’

      The lights in the garden came on, dizzying the flying insects. A frog croaked. A few other frogs took up the call and then more still until the air and earth vibrated with a thousand gargles.

      ‘Ah Cheong’s gone home,’ said Frederik. ‘He’ll come tomorrow morning. I brought you some groceries. I imagine you haven’t had time to go to the shops yet.’

      ‘That’s very thoughtful of you.’

      ‘There’s something I need to discuss with you. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if you’re up to it?’

      ‘I’m an early riser.’

      ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ His eyes hovered over my face. ‘You’re going to be alright on your own?’

      ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

      He looked unconvinced, but nodded. Then he turned and walked away, taking the path I had just come along, and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.

      In the pond, the heron shook out its wings, tested them a few times and flew off. It circled the area once, gliding past me. At the end of its loop the bird opened its wings wide and followed the trail of stars that were just appearing. I stood there, my face turned upwards, watching it dissolve into the twilight.

      Returning to my bedroom, I remember the plate of papaya Ah Cheong brought me. I make myself eat the remaining slices, then unpack my bags and hang my clothes in the cupboard. In the last few years I have heard people complaining that the highlands’ climate is no longer as cool as it used to be, but I decide to put on a cardigan anyway.

      The house is dark when I emerge from my room, and I have to remember my way along the twisting corridors. The tatami mats in the sitting room crackle softly when I walk on them, parched of oil from the press of bare soles. The doors to the verandah are open. Ah Cheong has placed a low, square table here, with thin rattan mats on each side of it. Below the verandah, five dark grey rocks, spaced apart, sit on a rectangular bed of gravel covered in leaves. One of the rocks is positioned further away from the others. Beyond this area, the ground slopes gently away to the edge of the pond.

      Frederik arrives, looking unhappy about having to sit on the floor. He drops a manila folder onto the table and lowers his body into a cross-legged position, wincing as he makes himself comfortable on the mat.

      ‘Does it feel strange to be back here?’ he asks.

      ‘Everywhere I turn, I hear echoes of sounds made long ago.’

      ‘I hear them too.’

      He unties the string around the folder and arranges a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘The designs for our latest range. This one here. . .’ a forefinger skates a sheet across the table’s lacquered surface to