The Secrets of a Fire King (15 page)

“Thirty years,” Marcella repeated, turning her attention back to Joyce. “You must have seen so many changes. Sometimes I look around and wonder what it was like here, say, fi fty years ago, or a hundred. All jungle, I imagine. Lovely, unspoiled jungle.”

“Yes, it must have been a completely different world,” Joyce said. “My husband always says he was born in the wrong century.

He’s always saying to me, ‘Fifty years earlier, old girl, and we’d still have had an empire.’”

Marcella’s face sobered; all traces of amusement fell away, and her expression became very distant. She sipped her tea and stared out at the garden where Jamal was burying stakes in a ring around each mango tree. “I imagine Encik Jamal has a different opinion regarding that,” she said at last.

Now it was Joyce’s turn to be silenced. She felt a blush of anger rise on her face. This girl—this Marcella Frank, just off the plane—was judging her! As if a bit of nostalgia for the lost, romantic past made Joyce herself a staunch imperialist. She glanced out the window at Jamal, remembering the rapid exchange he’d
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had with Marcella Frank, and her own futile attempts to learn the local language. She had tried, at first, but she had no facility, and when her early attempts, practiced so conscientiously before a mirror, had elicited only soft giggles or confusion, she had given up. It was hard enough to communicate even in her own language. Between herself and this young American, for instance, there was a chasm, a gap, into which fell all the connotations of her sentences. It was as if her words were stripped of all their nuances and reached her guest in a bare and unadorned state, sus-ceptible, then, to all the unknown meanings the girl herself attached to words. Still, Joyce took a deep breath. After all, she had been here so long, and it was her responsibility to reach out, no matter what. She asked Marcella what her husband did.

Marcella had been gazing out the window, too, but now she roused herself and turned back, pushing one hand through her dark curls. There was a fine line of sweat beading on her forehead. Even with the fan on high, the afternoon was very hot.

“He’s an ecologist,” she said. “Soil conservation. We were in Indonesia for two years, and now he’s working as a consultant for the new dam here. I’m a teacher,” she added. “English. Though they’ve only hired me part-time.”

“Well, that’s something new,” Joyce said, interested, for all the other women that she knew were wives of executives at the factory. “I once considered teaching. It doesn’t pay much, though, as I recall.”

Marcella put her tea down. “No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “But I’ve met so many people. And last week, for the first time, another teacher invited me to her family home. She grew up in a village about half a day’s drive from here. We sat on reed mats on the floor and ate with our hands, the way they do here, you know.

There was tea, and these wonderful cakes made from coconut milk, cool and very smooth, like white jelly.” Marcella smiled then, and stopped herself. “Of course,” she added, “you’d know all about that.” She laughed. “I’m sorry. After thirty years, this must seem very ordinary to you.”

Joyce smiled, sipping her tea, but she was surprised, thinking of Jamal’s rickety wooden house, or the modest bungalows of the
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lower managers at the factory. Places where, even in the depths of her great loneliness, she had never thought to go.

“You’ve certainly seen a lot,” Joyce said. She paused, struggling against an uneasiness—an unfamiliar envy, even, that Marcella Frank’s exuberant immersion into the local life had inspired.

“Of course,” she went on, “it takes quite a lot of time to
really
be accepted here. Why, it wasn’t until just last year that I knew I fi -

nally had been. I received an invitation to the palace then, for the sultan’s birthday. I’d often seen him, of course, and we’d met once or twice at the minister’s house, but to be invited to his birthday celebration—well, it was really such an honor.” She laughed lightly.

“I was in a dilemma for weeks about what I ought to wear.”

“And what did you decide?” Marcella asked. She had looked up, truly interested at last. Joyce allowed herself a moment of satisfaction before she answered, remembering the silence that had welled up around her when she entered the palace, her silk dress glowing like a shaft of golden light.

“I found a lovely piece of cloth in Singapore. Gold silk. And there’s a rather wonderful tailor here in town. I had some illustra-tions of course, from magazines, to show him the sort of thing I wanted, and he created it from there.”

“Gold, did you say?” Marcella asked.

“Yes,” Joyce said. She smiled, thinking of the dress, like a patch of opaque sunlight. “It was a lovely shade,” she added.

“Gold?” Marcella insisted. “And that was all right?”

“It was
lovely,
” Joyce said sharply, frowning now.

“No, no,” Marcella said. She was leaning forward, quite intent.

“That isn’t what I mean. I’m sure it was beautiful. What I meant was, no one said anything about the
color
?”

“My dear girl, why should they?” Joyce asked. “There were women there in every color you can imagine.”

“But gold,” Marcella said slowly. “I was told that gold is the sultan’s color. That no one else is allowed to wear it in his presence.”

“Oh, that,” Joyce said. She laughed and waved her hand in the air, but at the same time she felt a sudden horror ripple like a blush along her skin. She remembered the hush that had filled the room
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when she walked in, a stillness so complete that she’d heard only her own breathing, only the tap of her heels against the marble. It was true—the faces around her had seemed to freeze, mid-sentence, as she walked the length of the hall. She had taken it for a hush of admiration, but what if this girl, this Marcella Frank, was right?

It was simply too horrible to consider. Joyce, after an instant of pure dismay, shook the thought away. The sultan, after all, had received her very graciously.

“Surely,” she said, her voice a little strained even to her own ears, “surely they wouldn’t expect a foreigner to follow these same customs. Why of course not,” she went on, drawing assurance from her own argument. “Of course they wouldn’t. I’ve been here almost thirty years and if they did, I most certainly would have heard about it.”

“I could be mistaken,” Marcella, seeing her distress, said hast-ily. “I’m sure I must be. It was the other teachers who mentioned it to me. They didn’t want me to commit any social errors.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Joyce said, relieved. The locals had a thousand superstitions—about spirits and thieves, dangerous times of day. Even Jamal refused to do any work at dusk, because he claimed it was the hour when spirits roamed most freely. Joyce didn’t suppose she should give any more credence to the rumor about gold dresses than she gave to the other nonsense. “Everyone always comes here with the same idea.

They’ve read too many novels from the Raj. It was literally years before I received my invitation. In fact, you mustn’t be disappointed if you never get one. You wouldn’t be the fi rst.” As she spoke, a monkey slid over the fence into the garden, stole a mango, and stood on top of the cistern, waving angrily at Joyce. She jumped up and scooped a smooth stone from a bowl by the patio doors. Her aim was true; she hit the monkey in the arm.

He screamed and leaped up onto the fence, but not before he took one large bite from the unripe mango and threw it back into the garden.

Jamal came to investigate, and Joyce grew calmer as he collected the ruined fruit and threw it into the wasteland beyond the fence. Still, when she returned to her seat she was shaking, and she
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smoothed her skirt against her knees several times to regain her composure. “They’re in my garden all the time,” she explained to Marcella, who looked quite astonished. “I truly hate the creatures.”

“Really?” Marcella said, finishing her tea. “I think they’re kind of charming. The sultan’s youngest daughter keeps one for a pet.

It’s just a baby monkey, so I guess it’s harmless. She carries it around like a little doll.”

“That seems completely irresponsible,” Joyce said, wondering, as she spoke, how Marcella had come to know this. “Even small monkeys can be quite dangerous.”

Marcella pushed her dark curls back, looking thoughtful.

“She’s never alone with it. They lock it up at night, and of course she always has a servant with her during the day.” Joyce glanced out the window. Jamal was working on the last tree, sunlight beating the back of his neck a dark bronze. “The local teachers are certainly full of stories, aren’t they?” she said.

Marcella was silent for a long moment. “I’ve been tutoring the sultan’s children, actually,” she said at last. “The headmistress at the school asked if I’d be interested.”

Joyce turned to stare at her young guest.

“You hold special classes at the school?” she asked.

“No, at the palace,” Marcella told her evenly, meeting her gaze.

“I go three times a week.”

“My dear girl,” Joyce said. Marcella Frank was obviously a lackey, a kind of servant to the royal family, but she was also the only other foreigner Joyce knew who’d ever been inside. “Come, my dear, you must tell me all of it, now that you’ve begun.” Marcella gave a modest shrug. “There’s nothing to tell, really.

I teach them English in the afternoon and sometimes, after class, the sultan’s wife invites me in for tea. She’s already fluent, but she likes to learn American slang. It’s very casual. She tosses all these plump cushions on the floor, and then we sit and talk. She must be bored, don’t you think, just hanging around in the palace all day, nothing to do but play the piano or float around in the pool? After tea her sisters come by, and they do each other’s hair.” Marcella touched her own thick curls self-consciously, and laughed. “Last
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week they wove jasmine through mine, and piled it up on my head. I thought I’d never get the pins out!” Joyce, who had listened avidly, yet with disbelief, imagined white jasmine setting off the dark infusion of Marcella’s wild hair, perfume rubbing from the petals into the skin at the hollow of her throat.

Joyce’s own hair was cut off in a stylish cap, and now her hand wandered to the nape of her neck, stroked the blunt hairline. She did not speak, puzzled by the intensity of feeling that passed through her at the thought of Marcella Frank with jasmine in her hair.

“I thought,” Marcella went on, “that I might wear it that way for the sultan’s birthday, as well. What do you think, Mrs. Gentry?

Would that be too ostentatious?”

Joyce’s hand dropped to her collarbone. She felt the sharp line where the linen neckline met her fl esh.

“You’re going to the sultan’s party?” she asked.

Marcella nodded. “The invitation arrived two days ago. I think,” she added, “that it was edged in real gold.”

“Yes,” Joyce said slowly. “Yes, they use real gold.” She heard her voice speaking, but the words were almost ob-scured by the sound of high heels tapping against marble, which echoed in her head. She kept a tight smile on her face as she stood and went once again to the patio doors. Jamal, fi nished with the mango trees, was tending to the shelves of orchids in the shade of the house.

“I’m feeling somewhat faint, I’m afraid,” Joyce said, being very careful of her voice. “It must be the heat.” Marcella, concerned, rose at once. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

Joyce shook her head. She placed one hand on the cool stone wall. “I’ll be fine,” she said, the echo still ringing in her mind. She wanted to tell the girl to go, but she was aware that this would be too rude. “Let me get Jamal to see you out,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m suddenly in desperate need of a rest. He can give you a tour of the garden before you go.”

“Are you sure I can’t get you something?” Marcella asked.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

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“I’ll be fine,” Joyce said. She waved sharply to Jamal, called his name.

“He’s a nice man, isn’t he?” Marcella said after an awkward pause, reaching for her bag. “His daughter’s in my class. He’s so gentle with her. And so proud of her, too. You’ll really be all right?” she finished. “It was nice to meet you, then. Thank you for the tea.”

Marcella stepped onto the patio, and Jamal looked up, pleasure breaking across his face. Together they strolled from tree to bush, chattering away in a language Joyce did not understand. She watched them, feeling stunned and full of shame, as if she had been in a terrible accident and had awakened to fi nd strangers staring at her naked, damaged body. She thought of the mailman, of Jamal, both of whom had witnessed her eager vigil for the invitation.

“Jamal,” she called, more sternly than she’d meant to. “Don’t forget to show the maze you are constructing.” Jamal turned toward the house and nodded, and for an instant his eyes met hers. She watched the laughter in them disappear, saw the flicker of pure contempt—of hatred almost—that surfaced in the brief seconds before he lowered his gaze. He turned away so quickly that she did not have time to react, but then her heart began to beat with a rapid intensity. How could he feel that way toward her, after all she had done? When she thought of that ruined house he lived in, all that chaos and filth from which she’d taken him. And she’d have done more, too, much more, if only she’d known he had a daughter. She watched Jamal and Marcella carry on an animated exchange, a twisted feeling moving through her. Yet if Jamal truly hated her, then why would he have built her such a lovely garden? Surely there was more than craft behind the well-tended bushes, the array of fl owers?

Joyce roused herself and began to gather up the tea things.

The kitchen was spacious, lined with windows that overlooked the garden. Hibiscus bloomed, violent red and a blush of peach, all along the border. The veranda was lined with bougainvillea, and everything was neatly trimmed. It ought to have given Joyce some relief to see it, the color and the order, but today it only made her
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