“If it were up to me,” I continued, “I would tear down the cow-shed, reposition the laundry room, remove the wire fence altogether, and divide the lawn into sections filled with flowering shrubs — an intricate, exquisite cloisonné pillbox of foliage. There would be sun, shade, and chairs. Water, fishponds. You could sit outside in the evenings and play chess with Gecko, next to a fern-shrouded pool, shimmering and damascene, alive with bejewelled Japanese carp.”
For a few moments, he looked pensive, but then suddenly he became frightfully animated.
“But of course but of course but of course. We could do it, man!” he cried.
“What on earth are you talking about, D’Souza?”
“We could rebuild the bloody garden from top to bottom, and there’s only one person who could do it. You!”
“Me?” I breathed. “Surely not me.”
“Of course. With you at the head of our team, who could refuse us? We would say, ‘Give us money. We have the kind services of the world-famous aesthete and connoisseur of dwellings, Peter Wormwood. ’ And they will gladly give it to us!”
Alvaro is the best of the bunch. His natural, hot-blooded enthusiasm is still evident. He must have been quite something in his younger days. Last week I watched him as he tried to change a light-bulb in his room. He placed one foot on the little wooden chair and spread his spindly arms out for balance before heaving up the rest of his body. He rocked back and forth, arms waving, like a Japanese crane in the final throes of its mating dance. Finally he gave up and hopped off the chair, which toppled behind him. I felt a sudden fluttering sensation in my chest as I watched him and knew instantly what would follow. I tried to suppress the horrible, familiar throb in my head by shutting my eyes tightly and listing the things I had had for breakfast that morning: cheap white bread (toasted), a slice of papaya, some rice porridge. Too late, too late. The memory forced its way back into my head, clear as day, as if it were being played out before me. As always, I felt as if I was watching myself in a Technicolour film. In an instant, I was on top of that hill again — I have forgotten its name, but I remember its shape, broad and irregular like an elephant’s head. Johnny is walking ahead of me, so quickly he is almost running. I am struggling to keep up. My shirt is damp with sweat, and beyond the scant shade of my hat the sun is white, mesmerising. By the time I reach the crest of the hill I see Johnny standing on a tree stump ahead of me. He balances on it, swaying gently from side to side, his arms outstretched on either side of him. Against the blue and limitless sky he stands a hundred feet tall. “Come on!” he yells, and I run towards him, my legs suddenly feeling strong again. When I reach him he lets me stand on the stump, gripping my hand to help my balance. The sight before me stretches wider and further than I ever believed my eyes could encompass. “This is it,” Johnny says. “My home, the Valley.”
CONFRONTED WITH THE MONUMENTAL TASK of introducing order into the garden, I decided the best course of action would be to start with my own quarters. If I could decide how I wanted the garden to look from my room, all the details would soon fall neatly into place. I tidied the drawers, arranging everything in little piles and throwing out the more unfashionable items of my wardrobe. “A house is a machine for living in,” Le Corbusier once said, and how right he was. I put my vests in the top drawer so that I can get to them easily before breakfast. And on the bottom shelf I put two shoeboxes filled with an assortment of objets trouvés accumulated through the years, including two crucifixes and a Padre-Pio-in-a-snowstorm paperweight given to me by Gecko down the corridor. He’s the one who can’t stand up straight because his rib cage collapsed last year. I’ve never been sure what his real name is. I think it’s something like Yap Peng Geck — something very up-country at any rate. I’ve always called him Gecko because he used to scuttle everywhere, just like a little rubbery lizard. His manner of speaking, too, is unfortunate: high-pitched and ejaculatory, entire sentences compressed into single trills. Whenever he sits at my end of the dinner table, the conversation around me suddenly becomes a bizarre symphony, a heavy hum of old men’s voices adorned with Gecko obbligato. But now, since his chest and spine gave way, it takes him forever to get anywhere. He shuffles dismally along the corridor, and yesterday I overheard someone saying that he might need his meals brought to him in his room.
