We stood in a glade, the space around us cleared of thorny shrubs and dead trees and dark undergrowth. I swallowed and coughed spittle and blood, and in my short breaths I caught the soapy scent of wild frangipani. I gazed upwards and saw a white-filled sky.
“We’re in your garden,” I said.
He started to sing his song. I pressed my ear to his chest and heard the song hum softly. It spread itself out to sea, drifting thinly over the waves.
THIS PLACE IS the end. Twenty-two rooms occupied by twenty-two near-fossils, little more than a halfway house in the short journey to the cemetery down the road. The constant stench of frying shrimp paste — which, after all these years, I still abhor — wafts through the corridors, mingling with the ever-present bouquet of old-man’s piss. I keep my windows open, even at night. The mosquitoes may suck the life out of me, but when I die I refuse to do so in squalor. The way this place is run, my beautifully dressed corpse would probably remain undiscovered for several days, by which time the aroma of decaying flesh, stale urine, and rancid seafood would be somewhat unappealing in an enclosed space. Naturally, having the shutters open does have its drawbacks — chiefly, that I am exposed to the most horrific of all the crimes ever committed in the long and unpleasant history of this house: the garden. I gasp every time I look at this abomination of nature; even thinking about it makes me shudder. It consists solely of a large, uneven lawn—utterly jejune — bounded by a wire fence, unadorned except for a single, sorry group of sealing-wax palms whose stems have given up the fight to remain red and instead lapsed into a shade of grey, battered into submission by the relentless briny winds. Why are they there? They serve only to obscure the view of the sea from the verandah.
Every morning I wake up with sunlight pouring in through the floor-length shutters. I look out at this barren waste and I weep.
This is the price I have to pay.
Of course the other old boys think I’m completely eccentric in exposing myself to the elements. Sometimes, even the most senile idiot will try, patronisingly, to convince me that it is better to close the windows, as this will keep out the rain and the insects — as if I’ve lost my marbles (hah!) and don’t know what I’m doing. Obviously, I’m not remotely perturbed by this, seeing as I’m already known as the Mad English Devil, an epithet from which I am unlikely to be disassociated even if I do concede the issue of the shutters. As a brief aside, I’ve never been entirely certain of the accuracy of the translation of my nickname from the Chinese — I suspect that Alvaro politely edited the fruitier connotations from the original phrase when he translated it for me. He has this poorly conceived notion that I am to be pitied, being the lone foreigner in this place. And so he tells me things which I know to be untrue — compliments people supposedly pay me, words of admiration, always in Chinese, or Malay, or Tamil. Of course, one must take everything he says cum grano salis.
It’s only reasonable to expect, I hear you cry, that I should have some knowledge of Chinese after all these years, but I don’t. Not a bit. I have always detested the language; I find it so trenchant. And superfluous too, seeing as everyone speaks English — or some form of it — anyway. No, after sixty years of living here, the process of linguistic osmosis hasn’t worked in the way you’d assume. In fact, quite the reverse has happened: I have remained wonderfully impervious to Malay and Chinese, but my English, dear God, has been leached out of me. Some days I can hardly speak. The words don’t follow the sentiments, and recently I have developed the habit of stopping in midsentence. And as for writing, well — this current project is proving to be a real grind, not at all the thrilling adventure I had envisaged.
Still, I persevere.
I do wonder, though, who will thank me when this is finished? Nobody here, certainly, except possibly Alvaro, whose idea it was in the first place — not the idea that the garden should be rearranged (that was undoubtedly mine), but the idea that we, the residents, should ask the Church to make collections in aid of our garden, and that I should be the one to present the new design.
“Oh my dear goodness me,” Alvaro had cried as the idea popped into his thin little head. We had been sitting in the dining room discussing the nonexistent view of the sea, of the grounds, of the spire of St. Francis Xavier through the casuarinas in the distance. Everything was obscured by something, I said, launching into my usual tirade.
