The Garden of Evening Mists. Tan Twan Eng

staying at the Smokehouse Hotel.’ The historian writes down the telephone number on a piece of paper and gives it to me. ‘May I see the garden?’

      ‘It hasn’t been properly looked after.’ I ring the brass bell on the tray. ‘My housekeeper will show you out.’

      The day is turning out to be cloudless, with a strong, clear light pouring into the garden. The leaves of the maple tree by the side of the house have begun to turn, soon to become heavy with red. For some inexplicable reason this maple has always defied the lack of changing seasons in the highlands. I lean against a wooden post, my knuckles kneading the pain in my hip. It will take me a while to get used to sitting in the Japanese style again. From the corner of my eye I catch Frederik watching me.

      ‘I don’t trust that man, whatever his reputation,’ he says. ‘You should let other experts look at the prints as well.’

      ‘I don’t have much time here.’

      ‘But I’d hoped you’d stay for a while,’ he says. ‘There’s our new tea-room I want to show you. The views are magnificent. You can’t leave again so soon.’ He looks at me and a slow realisation slackens his face. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

      ‘Something in my brain, something that shouldn’t be there.’ I pull my cardigan tighter over my body. I sense him waiting for me to explain. ‘I’ve been having problems with names. There were occasions when I couldn’t think of the words I wanted to use.’

      His hand brushes the air. ‘I have those moments too. That’s just age catching up with us.’

      ‘This is different,’ I say. He looks at me, and I wonder if I should have kept quiet about it. ‘Sitting in court one afternoon, all of a sudden I couldn’t make head or tail of what I had written.’

      ‘The doctors, what did they say?’

      ‘The neurosurgeons ran their tests. They told me what I had suspected. I’m losing my ability to read and write, to understand language, any language. In a year – perhaps more, probably less – I won’t be able to express my thoughts. I’ll be spouting gibberish. And what people say, and the words I see – on the page, on street signs, everywhere – will be unintelligible to me.’ For a few seconds I am silent. ‘My mental competence will deteriorate. Dementia will shortly follow, unhinging my mind.’

      Frederik stares at me. ‘Doctors can cure anything these days.’

      ‘I don’t want to discuss this, Frederik. And keep this to yourself.’ My palm stops him, my palm with its two stubs. A moment later I close my three fingers and draw them back, holding them tight in a bud. I feel as though they have captured something intangible from the air. ‘The time will come when I lose all my faculties . . . perhaps even my memories,’ I say, keeping my voice calm with an effort.

      ‘Write it down,’ he says. ‘Write it all down, the memories that are most important to you. It shouldn’t be difficult – it’ll be like writing one of your judgments.’

      I glance sidelong at him. ‘What do you know about my judgments?’

      He gives me an embarrassed smile. ‘My lawyers have instructions to send a copy to me, every time the Law Reports publish them. You write well – your judgements are clear and engaging. I can still remember the case about the cabinet minister who used black magic to murder his mistress. You really should compile them into a book.’ The lines on his forehead deepen. ‘You once quoted an English judge. Didn’t he say that words are the tools of a lawyer’s trade?’

      ‘Soon I won’t be able to use those tools anymore.’

      ‘I’ll read them to you,’ he says. ‘Whenever you want to hear your own words again, I’ll read them aloud to you.’

      ‘Don’t you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you? By then I won’t be able to know what anyone says to me!’ He doesn’t flinch from my anger, but the sorrow in his eyes is unbearable to look at. ‘You’d better go,’ I say, pushing myself away from the post. My movements feel slow, heavy. ‘I’ve already made you late.’

      He glances at his watch. ‘It’s not important. Just some journalists I have to show around the estate, charm them into writing something complimentary.’

      ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’

      A smile skims across his face, capsizing an instant later. He wants to say something more, but I shake my head. He takes the three low steps down from the verandah, then slowly turns around to face me. All of sudden he looks like an old, old man. ‘What are you going to do?’

      ‘I am going for a walk.’

      Ah Cheong hands a walking stick to me at the front door of the house. I shake my head, then take it from him. The stick has a comfortable heft. I look at it for a moment and then return it to him. Three or four steps later I stop and glance back over my shoulder. He is still standing there in the doorway, looking at me. I feel his eyes pinned on me all the way until I reach the opposite side of the pond. When I look back across the water, he has gone back inside the house.

      The air is clean, as if it has never been breathed by any living thing. After the clammy heat of Kuala Lumpur, the change is welcome. It is almost noon, but the sun has slunk behind the clouds.

      Lotus pads tile the surface of the pond. There are too many of them; I had not noticed it the previous evening when I arrived. The hedges on the opposite side of the pond had originally been shaped to resemble the waves of an ocean surging to the shore, but they have not been properly clipped and their lines are blurred. The pavilion’s roof beams are sagging. The entire structure seems to be melting, losing the memory of its shape. Leaves and dead insects and bark peelings cover the floor. Something slithers among them and I step back.

      The track leading into the garden is paved with rings of slate cut from drill cores discarded from the gold mines of Raub. Each turn in the path reveals a different view; at no point is the entire garden revealed, making it appear more extensive than it actually is. Ornaments lie half-hidden among the overgrown lallang grass: a granite torso; a sandstone Buddha’s head with his features smoothened by mist and rain; rocks with unusual shapes and striations. Stone lanterns, their eaves curtained with tattered spider webs, squat among the curling ferns. Yugiri was designed to look old from the first stone Aritomo set down, and the illusion of age he had created has been transformed into reality.

      Frederik’s workers have been looking after the place, following the instructions I have given them. The garden has been maintained by untrained hands: branches that should have been left to grow pruned away; a view that should have been obscured opened up; a path widened without consideration to the overall harmony of the garden. Even the wind streaming through the shrubs sounds wrong because the undergrowth has been allowed to grow too densely and too high.

      The omissions and errors are like the noise generated by a collection of badly tuned musical instruments. Aritomo once told me that of all the gardens he created, this one meant the most to him.

      Halfway in my walk through the garden, I stop, turn around and head back to the house.

      The fourteenth-century bronze Buddha in the study has not grown older; his face is unmarked by the cares of the world. Ah Cheong has opened the windows to air the room all day, but the smell of mildew from the books on the shelves ages the twilight filling up the house.

      The feeling that something was wrong with me surfaced five or six months ago. I was often awakened by headaches in the night, and I began to tire easily. There were days when I could not summon up any interest in my work. My concerns sharpened into fear when I began to forget names and words. It was not merely the unfolding of age, I suspected, but something more. I was frail when I had emerged from the slave-labour camp, and my health had never recovered completely. I had forced myself to pick up the life I had known before the war. Being an advocate, and later on, a judge, had given me solace; I had found enjoyment in working with words, in applying the law. For over forty years I had succeeded in staving off this exhaustion of the body, but I had always feared that a day would come