I smiled. He was not, as my nanny would have said, an oil painting, but he had the silent, easy grace of a Balinese nobleman of the type depicted in lithographs of sumptuous palaces.
“You must be the only person in Singapore who reads Shelley,” I said.
When he smiled his face transformed into that of a child — radiant, innocent, happy. He said, “My wife speaks English.”
“You’re married. How wonderful.”
“I am improving my English,” he said, looking down at his book, “so that I can converse freely with her — and her family too.” His smile faded slowly and all of a sudden he looked sad and utterly defeated by the world.
Without thinking I said, “But English is such a rudimentary language. I will teach you everything you need to know.”
The smile returned and he was a child again. In a strain of halting English more mellifluous to my ears than Dryden’s, he told me about his wife and his home. He told me about his work, and as he did so opened his satchel to reveal a small piece of silk. It was at once iridescent and delicate, and shone with a colour no Occidental could ever have conceived.
“Clair de lune,” I breathed, reaching for it across the table.
He seemed perplexed, and watched me as I held it in my hands, allowing it to cascade from my fingers. It was shot through with so many strands of colour that every time it moved its appearance changed: moonlight, emeralds, and pearls all passed through my hands. This cold chameleon so transformed itself that I could scarcely believe it was the same piece of cloth.
“Take it,” Johnny said, appearing strangely unconcerned by the imminent loss of this treasure. He put his book in his satchel and finished his tea. He was leaving Singapore the next day; I did not know when I would see him again. I felt a sudden surge of panic. I wanted to hear more. I asked him to tell me about the Valley but he looked confused. He shrugged and said, “What is there to say?”
“Tell me everything,” I said, “everything.”
My lips trembled as I repeated the names of the towns in the Valley. As he spoke, a strange landscape reconstructed itself in my mind’s eye: I saw caves disappearing into jagged hills, the land dissolving into the sea; I saw a man swimming in a pool of coloured textiles and a woman, Snow, melting into the earth.
“It’s nothing special,” he said with a final shrug.
I reached for the piece of cloth and folded it tenderly before placing it in my pocket. I wanted to go to the Valley at once.
NOW, BORDERS. I have sketched out a plan on a large piece of paper showing where they should be. Although they follow a basic east-west scheme to avoid being shredded to ribbons by the prevailing winds, they are cleverly disguised by their languidly snaking shapes and differing masses, and do not therefore appear regimented in any way. One shudders at the thought of the harshness to be found in the great French gardens — in Versailles, for example, the greatest of them all, where rows of trees are lined up like soldiers on parade. In spite of what the French would have us believe, I have always thought their gardens display a certain poverty of imagination, a failure of the romantic impulse.
My designs owe nothing to the tradition of those gardens the French think of as le jardin anglais, the grand visions of classical perfection at Stowe or Blenheim, for example. How distasteful that would be in a setting such as this. If anything, this will be a wild garden, a creation of seemingly casual beauty, whose charms are quiet, understated. Some of the borders are large and deep, others long and shallow; some are planted with tall shrubs, others with ground cover, many with a mixture of both. Heliconia share their beds with cannas, golden trumpets tumble into masses of wax ginger, bauhinia jostle for space with red hibiscus—bunga raya, the national flower. The result is quite breathtaking, a simply presented, richly flavoured taste of something sublime. Is the purpose of a flower bed not similar to that of a poem? Within their artificial boundaries, both contain a tiny world of beauty, a joyous compression of life.
I have put as much detail as possible into the sketch, indicating the approximate sizes of the borders and writing the names of the plants in their respective positions. I have told Alvaro that these details are NONNEGOTIABLE, and that if the Church gardeners decide to take liberties with the planting I shall destroy my sketch. “I am quite capable of it, I warn you,” I said as he pinned the sketch up on the notice board outside the dining hall. He did not seem to think this a problem. He merely smiled and shook his head, repeating “no” gently, over and over again, as if to calm a child. This incensed me and I stormed into my room, slamming the door for good measure. The creation of paradise is not something I take lightly.
