THE RAIN LASTED ALL DAY and into the night. It washed mud down from the hills onto the flagstones beneath my window and turned the open drains into angry red rivers. Here in the tropics the rain dominates the landscape, turning everything into strange images of itself. Its pale haziness becomes opaque, even mirrored, and blurs every shape that falls within its shroud, so that you can never be certain where something begins and ends. If you stare hard enough at it, you might even see a reflection of yourself a mere ten paces away. These tropical storms do not leave room for indifference; they wring apathy from your body, electrifying your thoughts. It is often said that the sun makes the white man go mad, but I do not agree. It is the rain that does it. It turns you into a different person.
Solitude, I decided, was the most fitting state for me, and by the time we reached the rest house I had resolved to isolate myself in dignified silence. I barricaded myself in my room, or else strolled through the expansive, attractive grounds of the house, singing to myself in perfect pitch. “Ich habe genug,” I sang molto espressivo, surprising myself with a sustained low B: I did not think my voice was still capable of such things. Encouraged by this unexpected treat, I moved on to some Mozart arias, and found that the words came back to me easily. I thought I’d lost them when I travelled the seas to these hot lands; where I kept them all this time I do not know, but they must have found a hiding place inside me, for I had never made any attempt to keep them safe. Alone under the damp whispering trees, my voice did not sound at all foreign; it reached out and danced amidst the foliage, as much a part of the jungle as the vines that reached down and brushed my face with faint caresses. My natural singing voice was, of course, a baritone — everyone used to tell me so at Oxford. But why stick with what’s natural, I thought? I always wanted to be a countertenor. I wanted to be able to sing all the roles — Julius Caesar, Tamberlaine, Orfeo; I wanted to be the Count as well as the Countess, to be Cherubino, that amorphous, ardent little creature. I wanted to sing all things to all men — and all women too.
I was about to lift my voice in a violently sentimental rendition of “Porgi, amor,” when I saw a figure disappear into a thicket of trees some distance away. I dropped my body and crept slowly into the bushes, smelling the pungent odour of wet mud under my feet. The person — it was a man, that much I could tell — moved stealthily and with the litheness of a young animal, appearing and disappearing amongst the trees, touching them gently as if he knew each one by name. He kept to the shadows, never venturing into the pools of dappled light that filtered through the foliage onto the forest floor. Out of the corner of my eye I spied another two figures walking slowly across open ground, heading towards a small cream-coloured gazebo that stood on the shoulder of a hill. It was Snow and Kunichika. I looked for the creeping figure in the adjacent woods — nothing. I moved slightly to gain a better view of Snow and Kunichika. He was quite the model of unhurried elegance, leaning against the poles of the gazebo with his hands resting on the frail little banister that encircled them, utterly relaxed in his expensively tailored clothes. He chatted softly, his head dropping and rising in a display of empathy and understanding, his entire body looking soft and accommodating — not at all the man I knew from our humble Kampar rest house. Throughout this time Snow sat facing him; I could not see her face. The strains of my Handelian heroes and Mozartian heroines filled my head in a riotous polyphony, and I became aware of the quickening of my breath. The morning sun was gaining in intensity, and I began to feel dizzy. I leaned back against a tree stump to catch my breath. I pressed my palms to my eyes, and saw, imprinted in phosphorescent hues, the image of Snow and Kunichika laughing in the gazebo. When I opened my eyes, they had left the gazebo and were walking briskly back to the house.
I ran into Johnny as we were preparing to leave the rest house. “Hello, stranger, where have you been?” I said.
“Out walking,” he said, taking his things to the car. His movements were leaden and wrung of enthusiasm, and when he looked at me he did not do so with his usual fondness.
“Is something the matter, Johnny?” I said, grabbing him by the elbow as he shuffled across the porch.
“Of course not,” he said, shrugging. Although he had put on a new shirt, he still looked shabby and tired.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said. “Just look at the state you’re in. You’ve got mud all over your shoes.”
He briefly caught my eye as he squinted into the light. “So do you,” he said.
