There. Repeated verbatim, after nearly seventy years. Brother Anthony was right: I would remember it for the rest of my life. I was nine when I first encountered that passage. I had allowed myself to become embroiled in an unseemly spat with a foulmouthed boy who had scrawled CUNT on my tuck box, and before long our feud developed into a pathetic little fistfight — more shoving and kicking than actual grown-up punching, if truth be told. I was brought before the gigantic Brother Anthony, my housemaster, who, before he administered what was to be the first of the many thrashings I suffered at his hands, sneered at me and called me the work of the Devil. “Wormwood,” he said, as if tasting something odious on his brutish palate, “that says it all.” He opened his drawer and produced two things: a short cane and a Bible, bound in cheap black leather. He bent me over the edge of his desk and set the Bible in front of my face; with a thick nicotine-stained finger he tapped at a spot on the page and said, “Read that aloud.” I began to read the verse. He struck the first blow and I cried out. “I didn’t tell you to stop, you dirty troublemaker,” he said. I continued to read through choking breaths; my eyes clouded with hot tears. The name of the star is called Wormwood and many men died because the waters were bitter. “You’ll remember that for the rest of your life, Wormwood.” Every time I was punished I was made to read that passage, as if repeating it would rid me of the bitterness of my name, my self. After only a short while I could recite it by heart without recourse to the Bible, and the beatings, too, became bearable. I stopped hating the good Brother Anthony, but when I meet him in Purgatory I will have to tell him that it didn’t work: I remember the words, but all my bitterness is still there. Except for a few brief days in 1941, I have carried it inside me all my life.
WHEN DID THE TIDE of wormwood begin to rise within me after I got to the Valley? I thought I had rid myself of it. On all my walks with Johnny I felt nothing but uninterrupted happiness. Even when I searched for some lingering trace of malevolence within myself, I found none. And then one evening I experienced the prick of discontent, a sickly tingle at the back of my throat that I had not felt since coming to the Valley. I had been invited by the Soongs to join them at the wayang kulit, or shadow theatre, which I understood was a kind of Oriental Punch-and-Judy accompanied by wind instruments with trenchant chords similar to those of a bagpipe. I dressed appropriately for a tropical evening — open-necked cream silk shirt and flannels — and dabbed some Essence of West Indian Limes on my jowls. I arrived at the Soong house feeling fresh and very lively. I was looking forward to seeing Snow again.
She was not amongst the people gathered in the sitting room pleasantly sipping drinks. Someone else was there, though — my elusive neighbour, Kunichika.
“What a surprise to see you here,” he said brightly, hiding what I took to be a mixture of displeasure and shock behind a charming smile and a little bow. For a few minutes he behaved with exuberant fake bonhomie, joking about various things — the diabolical food at the rest house, the envy with which he regarded my camera, the troop of monkeys that gathered in the trees every evening, begging for food from the kitchen. “Goodness knows how Mr. Wormwood gets any peace with all their chattering!” he said to T. K. Soong.
I smiled politely and said, “I manage.”
Snow did finally emerge, wearing a brocade blouse over loose-fitting, dark-coloured trousers. She looked very refined, just like an Imperial Manchu consort.
“You are staring at something, Peter,” she said wearily. “Is something the matter with my dress?”
“No, of course not — nothing at all. It’s marvellous,” I said, feeling myself blush.
She greeted Kunichika with more warmth and familiarity — rather too much warmth and familiarity, I thought. He bowed low and she offered him her hand, which he accepted with one hand and clasped with the other. She smiled timidly, dangerously, and held his gaze. I looked at her parents, expecting their disapproving countenances, but I found none. They merely smiled vapidly, as they always did. Mrs. Soong turned to me and said, “Professor Kunichika is a marquis, you know.”
