The Garden of Evening Mists (16 page)

He stopped and raised his face to the mountains. After a minute or two he turned back to the other man, and they walked to the path that would take them out of Yugiri and into the jungle. Through the breaks in the trees I caught glimpses of Aritomo. The other man was harder to spot, his khaki clothes blending him into the surroundings. The canopy soon closed over the path, like the ocean sealing over the wake of a passing ship, and I lost sight of them both.

Three days after the meeting with Tatsuji, I wake up with no knowledge of who I am, no memory of who I have been. It frightens me, and yet at the same time I feel a sense of release.

My doctors assured me that memory loss is not a symptom of my condition, but of late these episodes have been happening more and more frequently. The moment passes, but I continue to lie in bed. Reaching across the sheets I pick up the writing pad next to me, reading through it at random.
You make it sound as though they have souls.
It takes a few seconds before I remember that I had written this. I scan through a few more pages, jarred by each word I think is not quite right. I stop at the mention of Chan Liu Foong, the woman I prosecuted just before being sacked; I wonder what happened to her and where her daughter is now.

It is more difficult than I have imagined, setting down things that happened so long ago. I question the accuracy of my memory. That afternoon at Magnus’s
braai
, after Frederik drove me back from Yugiri – it stands out with such clarity in my mind that I wonder if it had actually taken place, if the people there had actually said what I think I remember. But does it matter?

Nearly all of them are dead.

But Frederik was right – I feel I
am
writing one of my judgments, experiencing the familiar sensations as the words snare me in their lines until I lose all awareness of time and the world beyond the page. It is a feeling in which I have always taken pleasure. It provides me with more than that now: it gives me some control over what is happening to me. But for how long this will last, I have no idea at all.

* * *

The reclining Buddha lies in a pool of sun on the windowsill. Tatsuji pokes around the study while I bring out the woodblock prints. They are kept in an airtight camphorwood chest. I lay them on the desk. Tatsuji is admiring a pewter tea caddy he found on one of the shelves, his fingers stroking the bamboo leaves carved on its surface. He puts it down carefully and hurries over to my side.

I lift the corners of the first sheet; dust and the smell of camphor the papers have absorbed over the years swirl up and taunt my nose. Tatsuji turns away and compresses a succession of sneezes into his handkerchief. Regaining his composure, he takes out a pair of white cotton gloves from an old but well-preserved leather satchel and puts them on. One by one he moves the sheets from the stack to another pile, counting as he goes along. The paper on which each
ukiyo-e
has been printed is approximately the size of a serving tray. Each print is contained inside a rectangular or circular border and every piece of the
ukiyo-e
appears to have a different design.

‘Thirty six pieces,’ he says.

He skims a large magnifying glass over the first print
,
distorting the shapes and the colours beneath like the lights of a city skyline seen through a rain-spattered window.

‘Remarkable,’ he murmurs. ‘As good as
The Fragrance of Mists and Tea
.’

He is referring to a well known
ukiyo-e
of Aritomo’s: a vista of the tea fields of Majuba estate. Aritomo had donated that particular woodblock print to the Tokyo National Museum before I met him, and its iconoclastic status has increased over the decades, surpassed only by Hokusai’s
The Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave
. I suspect the reference to
The Fragrance of Mists
and Tea
is Tatsuji’s unsubtle way of reminding me that I have allowed it to be reproduced in a number of art books. I have even seen the print on the T-shirts sold in the souvenir shops in Tanah Rata.

‘They were all made before I knew him,’ I say.

‘Creating an
ukiyo-e
print is a time-consuming and difficult process,’ Tatsuji says. ‘The artist has to draw an outline on a piece of paper before pasting it on a block of wood. An inverse copy of the drawing is then carved on it. A print like this, with such a variety of colours and depth of detail, would need seven, perhaps ten, different blocks.’ Bewilderment tugs at his face.

‘I do not see any duplicates here. Why go to all the trouble and then make only one copy of each work? Are you sure there are no other pieces lying around the house?’

‘These are the only ones he left behind. He sold his prints to buyers in Japan,’ I say. ‘I’ve always suspected that was how he supported himself – he never took on any commissions to design gardens when he was living here.’

‘I have tracked down all of the prints he sold. None of those I have seen is a copy of these.’ Tatsuji’s voice has the faintest tremor in it, and I notice the shine in his eyes. His already high standing in the academic world will be elevated further once his book on Aritomo – with the inclusion of these prints – is published.

‘There’s another print hanging in Majuba House,’ I remember.

‘I would like to see that too.’

‘I doubt Frederik will object. I’ll ask him.’

Tatsuji puts down his magnifying glass. ‘The subject matters of the
ukiyo-e
are also unusual.’

‘Unusual? In what way?’

He pulls a print from the pile, holding it up in his hands like a piece of fabric offered by a merchant. ‘You have never noticed it?’

‘They’re scenes of mountains and nature. Common subjects for
ukiyo-e
, I would have thought.’

‘All of them are views of Malaya,’ he says, ‘every single one of them. There is nothing here that is related to his own homeland, none of the usual motifs beloved of our
ukiyo-e
artists: no winter landscapes, no scenes of Fujiyama or the Floating World.’

I page through the sheets again. Each piece contains recognisable elements of Malaya: lush tropical jungles; lines of rubber trees in estates; coconut trees bowing towards the sea; flowers and birds and animals that are found only in the equatorial rainforests – a Rafflesia, a pitcher plant, a mouse deer, a tapir.

‘It has never occurred to me before,’ I say.

‘I suppose it is not something you think about when you see it all around you.’ He strokes the
ukiyo-e
. ‘I would like to examine these in detail before I decide which ones I want to be included in my book.’

‘They are not to be photographed or taken out of Yugiri without my permission,’ I warn him.

‘That goes without saying.’

Keeping my voice light, I say, ‘I’ve heard that you collect human skin, that you buy and sell tattoos.’

He shapes the knot of his tie with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I keep that aspect of my work circumspect.’

‘So you should.’

‘
Horimono
has never been accepted by the Japanese public, but there are wealthy collectors keen to own pieces of tattoos created by famous
horimono
masters,’ Tatsuji says.

‘Sometimes, a man might wish to sell his skin; on a few occasions I have acted as a broker for such transactions.’

‘So how much does a man’s skin fetch?’

‘The price varies,’ Tatsuji says. ‘It would depend on the identity of the artist, the scarcity of his works, the quality and size of the piece in question.’

The memory of a museum in Tokyo I visited ten years ago comes back to me. The museum was famous for its collection of tattoos
.
They were of various sizes and age, sealed and preserved inside glass frames. I had walked among the hangings on the walls, looking at the faded ink on human skin, repelled and, at the same time, fascinated.

‘What made you become interested in tattoos?’

‘The worlds of
ukiyo-e
and
horimono
overlap,’ Tatsuji continues. ‘Quite a number of
horoshi
created woodblock prints too.’

‘Yes, yes, you’ve told me that already. “They fill their buckets from the same well.” Now tell me the
real
reason.’

He breathes in deeply and then exhales. ‘The first time I saw the
horimono
Aritomo-sensei put on my friend’s back... at that time I knew nothing about tattoos, but even then I realised that it was magnificent, a work of art. I thought it was wonderful that an
ukiyo-e
artist could also create similar drawings on the human body. Seeing that
horimono
started me on a life-long obsession with them.’

‘Your friend’s tattoo wasn’t preserved... after his death?’

Tatsuji shakes his head. ‘For years I have been searching for other
horimono
created by Aritomo-sensei, but I have never found any.’ He is silent for a moment. ‘Tattoos created by
horoshi –
by masters
–
are very much sought after,’ he continues, ‘but as an outsider it was difficult for me to enter their world.’ His gaze drops to the
ukiyo-e
on the table. ‘To earn their respect, their trust, I had myself tattooed.’

It is an extraordinarily intimate revelation for him to make, having only met me twice. I sit down on the edge of the table and cross one leg over the other. They still look good, my legs, firm and unblemished by any liver spots, with no cobwebs of varicose veins anywhere. ‘You had a tattoo put on your whole body?’

‘A
horimono
? Oh no. No, I asked for a tattoo to be put here.’ He runs his right hand over his left arm, from the shoulder to about two inches above the elbow. I stare at it, but see nothing underneath his sleeve. ‘It was difficult to get a
horoshi
to work on me,’ he continues. ‘I had to provide letters of recommendation and references. Even then they turned me down. But in the end one of them agreed to work on me. Word spread once I had the tattoo, and the other
horoshi
started recommending their clients to me, clients who wanted to sell their
horimono
.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ I say, aware that I am being ill-mannered.

Tatsuji’s thumb probes the dimple in the knot of his tie. He comes to a decision and removes the silver cufflink on his left wrist. He proceeds to roll up his sleeve, his movements so precise that each fold seems to have the same width – about an inch and a half. Reaching his elbow, he pushes the rolled-up sleeve to his shoulder, exposing the tattoo wrapped around his upper arm. I get off the table and lean in to take a closer look. Inside a field of grey clouds, two white cranes pursue each other in a loop, almost catching one another.

‘The artist captured the birds well,’ I say.

‘It is not as good as the tattoo Aritomo-sensei put on my friend.’

‘Your wife was fine with it, when you came home with this?’ I ask.

‘I have never married.’ He strokes one of the cranes. ‘Like you.’

I ignore the last bit and instead study the colours on his arm. ‘What you told me about Aritomo... that he was a tattoo artist,’ I say. ‘If it was disclosed to the world, it would ruin his reputation.’

‘His name would become immortal.’

‘The gardens he created have already made him immortal,’ I correct him.

Tatsuji rolls down his sleeve with the same careful movements he showed earlier.

‘Gardens change over time, Judge Teoh. Their original designs are lost; erased by wind and rain.

The gardens Aritomo-sensei made no longer exist in their original forms,’ he adds, buttoning his cuff. ‘But a tattoo? A tattoo can last forever.’

‘
The palest ink will outlast the memory of men
.’ From out of nowhere the old Chinese proverb comes to me, and I wonder where I have heard it before.

‘Only if it has been preserved properly,’ Tatsuji points out.

‘Years ago I went looking for the gardens Aritomo had designed. It was the one and only visit I ever made to Japan.’

‘Did you find them?’ The look on his face tells me he already knows the answer.

‘It
was
difficult locating them,’ I admit. ‘The old families whose gardens he had made had died since the war, the descendants dispersed, their ancestral homes sold or subdivided. An apartment block or a road had been built over where his gardens had once been. I found only one of his gardens that still existed. It had been turned into a neighbourhood park.’

‘Ah, that was in Kyoto, in the old Chushojima suburb. I have been there.’

‘As I walked in it, I could tell that it was not the original design he had created. It lacked his spirit.’

‘Yugiri is the only garden that still bears his imprint,’ Tatsuji says.

I pull out the last sheet of woodblock print from the pile. It is a triptych, three vertical rhomboid frames almost coming together, pyramids with their tops cut off. The objects inside the frames are misshapen. Feeling queasy all of a sudden, I press my palm on the table for support, terrified that my illness has taken another turn, removing my ability to recognise shapes and forms. The doctors have said nothing about this. I blink my eyes a few times, but the objects remain warped.

Tatsuji takes the
ukiyo-e
from me and holds it up high, tilting his head back to study it.

The light through the rice-paper moulds his face with colours, transforming him into a performer in a Beijing opera I once attended. I want to ask him if the print looks normal to him, but I am afraid of what he will tell me.

An idea pushes its way out from my confusion. ‘Give it to me,’ I tell Tatsuji.

He looks puzzled at the urgency in my voice. I take the print from him, nearly snatching it, and spread it on the table, smoothing it out with my palm. I take a step back, and then another.

He glides backwards to stand next to me. Both of us look at the
ukiyo-e
.

The distortions in the print are gone. We are standing at the edge of three parallel lotus ponds narrowing into the distance. The trees, the sky and the clouds all have been brought into the water, into the drawing. Relief charges into me. My laughter sounds loud in the study, unnatural, but I don’t care. I laugh again. Tatsuji looks at me, amused but not sure why.