The previous day’s rain had washed thin rivers of mud onto many of the smaller roads, but we drove on regardless. This was the only way to Tanjong Acheh, the point on the coast where we will catch a boat to the Seven Maidens. That was Johnny’s opinion. Even I was surprised at how certain he sounded. We are now a long way from Kampar — farther, surely, than any boy can cycle. Perhaps this was where he was born, where he grew up; perhaps he did not, as we all believe, spend his youth as a labourer in Tiger Tan’s famous shop. His knowledge of this place seemed to come from some deep recess, something locked away so safely that even he may have forgotten its origin.
It was at that moment that I realised, with absolute clarity, that I did not know him at all. But then again I think I have always known that intimacy between us was impossible. That was why I wanted him: he would always be alien to me. And worse, it was I who pretended otherwise. I said things I now know were untrue. “We are kindred spirits,” I told him as we held hands by the river, not a hundred yards from my parents’ disapproving gaze. He looked at me with innocent eyes and believed every word I said. Then, as now, there lies an unfordable divide between us. Even Mother, in her own bizarre way, is at one with Father. She understands what he wants of her, and vice versa. They each supply what the other needs. That is marriage.
At around midday Honey stopped the car in the shade of a large mangosteen tree whose branches hung thinly over the road. We got out and leant against the car while eating the tiffins we had brought with us from the hotel. There were boiled eggs, luncheon meat, fried bread, and rice with sambal belacan. Peter let out a large yelp, as if something had startled him, and began rummaging in his rust-coloured satchel.
“I’ve just remembered something,” he said, and he pulled out a camera. It was sleek and black and looked brand-new. In his uneven, loping gallop, he ran a short distance away and turned to face us. He examined the top of the camera, uncertain of the buttons, while we continued to pick at our food.
“The fool doesn’t know how to use the camera,” Honey said.
Johnny began to walk towards Peter to offer his help, but just then Peter raised the camera to his face and called out, “Look wonderful, everyone.”
I tried to smile but the sun made me squint.
Peter beamed brightly and began to walk back to the car. Suddenly he stopped and raised his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the light. “Hello,” he said, “there’s something further up the road. Someone, I think. A woman. Selling fruit, it seems to me. Come and have a look.”
We trudged out into the middle of the mud-streaked road. Sure enough, in the distance, we saw an old Malay woman with baskets of fruit set out on either side of her. She sat perfectly still, and looked as if she had been there for a very long time.
“How strange,” said Honey. “ We didn’t spot her before, did we?”
None of us had.
“Where on earth do you think she’s appeared from?” Peter said. “And what is she doing here anyway? This road is hardly what you might call a highway.”
He was right. We had not seen another car since leaving the Formosa.
“She might have walked out of the jungle,” Johnny said, pointing vaguely at the thickly forested expanse around her. “There are many hidden villages, even where you least expect to find them.”
Kunichika turned to Johnny and said, “Are you sure?”
“I’m not convinced,” Honey said. “Look at the undergrowth — no one could have walked through that carrying baskets of fruit.”
“Let’s go and talk to her,” Peter said, like a child asking to be taken to the seaside.
She was several hundred yards away, and when we approached we saw that her baskets were filled with all kinds of fruit: jackfruit, rambutan, chiku, guava, mangosteen. We bought as much as we could and immediately began to eat. We had not realised how hungry we were from the driving.
Peter whispered in my ear. “Snow, is she blind?”
I had not noticed her eyes — pale and cloudy with cataracts. Speaking in Malay, I asked her where she had come from — had she walked far?
Her reply was in a dialect so strange, so rural I could not understand it. I looked at Johnny, but he shrugged his shoulders.
“What did she say?” Peter whispered with mounting excitement.
I paraphrased my questions in the hope of getting a more lucid response. Again, the same mumble. It did not even sound like Malay. I exchanged a quizzical look with Johnny. “I can’t understand either,” he said.
“I believe,” Kunichika said, “that Johnny’s hunch was right after all. She has come from a settlement a few miles from here. She says that her daughters helped her carry the baskets and will return later to help her home.”
“Well, tell her she’ll be waiting a long time for her next customer,” Honey said.
I looked at Kunichika as he spoke, his thin lips widening into a smile. His voice sounded as if it belonged to a different person.
The old woman muttered something.
