“Do you want me to re-create the Steppes just for these little buggers?”
“It’s not only for them,” Gecko chirped. “There are lots of other birds too.”
“Look here,” I said, “this is a garden, not a bloody bird sanctuary. Its primary purpose is to provide pleasure to humans. It isn’t a playground for truculent birds.”
“You told me that this garden — any garden — is a re-creation of the Garden of Eden,” said Alvaro. “It is the recapturing of our Paradise Lost, you said. Those were your exact words.”
“My dear boy,” I replied, “I think I may have been misinterpreted.”
“No, those were the words you used,” he insisted, shaking his head like a stubborn child.
“Well then, you’ve been too literal in your understanding of what I was trying to express.”
He looked puzzled. “Explain it to me again, please.”
“No,” I said, gathering my sketches and notebooks. “If you haven’t already understood my philosophy, a lengthy exegesis is unlikely to provide further illumination. The bottom line is: no birdbath.”
I retired to my room, where I paused briefly to reflect on — and, I must admit, admire — the strength of my resolve. I felt absolutely justified in standing firm on the matter. Although harmony with nature is of considerable importance in planning a garden, it must never be allowed to obscure what lies at the heart of the design: the salvation of the human spirit. In creating a garden, we acquire, by force, a patch of land from the jungle; we mould it so that it becomes an oasis amidst the wilderness. It is an endless struggle. Turn our backs for a moment and the darkness of the forest begins its insidious invasion of our tiny haven. The plants that we insert — artificially, it must be noted, for no garden is a work of Mother Nature — must not only provide shelter for the soul, they must be able to absorb and then disperse the creeping darkness of the jungle around us. The decorations do not merely adorn, they protect. They create a place where, at the end of our lives, we may find peace.
And no peace will ever be found amidst those infuriating little birds.
THOSE WHO TRULY KNOW the jungle do not invite it into their homes. They fight to keep it from their dwelling places, fiercely patrolling the boundaries; they understand that the threat from the denizens of the tangled forest is constant. The jungle is alive and it is dangerous. This was one of the very first things I learnt when I came to the Valley, when Johnny took me on a walk across the Cameron Highlands. Since our reacquaintance in Kampar, he seemed exceedingly keen to show me the Valley, and we had been on several long walks already. Each time the drill would be the same: Johnny would appear at my guest house, where he would be greeted by the towkay with considerable enthusiasm (from my room, I could hear Johnny’s polite, protracted refusals to join the family for tea); he would then appear at my door, wearing a smile of undimmed delight. Always, he held a book, and although the choice of reading material sometimes changed, he clearly had his favourites. Shelley, as I have explained, was one—“shows impeccable taste,” I told him — and Dornford Yates another. Our conversation on those first walks was always the same. He asked the questions, I answered them.
“What is the meaning of ‘expostulation’?” “Who was Ozymandias, actually?” “Was Hamlet really crazy?” “What is the difference between ‘toilet’ and ‘lavatory’?”
He drank my answers as if quenching an ancient thirst. They were all that he needed to sustain himself on these walks, it seemed. He never drank from the flask of boiled water we carried with us; all he wanted to do was ask and listen. He was inexhaustible.
This particular walk in the high, cool hills above Tanah Rata was the longest yet: seventeen miles, Johnny said, all the way through the Camerons, up to the peak of Beremban, taking in Robinson Falls. The prospect of an entire day treading through the prehistoric jungles of the Valley filled me with such naked joy that for the first few miles I easily kept up with Johnny. We walked along undulating paths that ran along the bottom of steep slopes clad with tea hedges. The bright green of these bushes blanketed the valleys so thickly that I almost believed I could plunge into it and not be hurt. Beyond these low-lying slopes rose the spine of the hills, huge and silent, covered in ancient rainforest. The morning sun fell on every undulation: a softly bronzed valley painted with zebra-striped shadows.
The nature of our conversation up to that point was entirely predictable.
“Why do people in England have to change into special clothes for dinner?” Johnny asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you wear a ‘black tie,’ ” he said. “What is that?” I noticed that in the jungle he spoke freely, and without the hesitation that made his English seem stilted and primitive in Kampar.
“My dear boy,” I replied, “I fear you have been paying too much attention to Dornford Yates.”
