The Garden of Evening Mists Read Online Free PDF Page B

three fingers and draw them back, holding them tight in a bud. I feel as though they have captured something intangible from the air. ‘The time will come when I lose all my faculties... perhaps even my memories,’ I say, keeping my voice calm with an effort.
    ‘Write it down,’ he says. ‘Write it all down, the memories that are most important to you.
    It shouldn’t be difficult – it’ll be like writing one of your judgments.’
    I glance sidelong at him. ‘What do you know about my judgments?’
    He gives me an embarrassed smile. ‘My lawyers have instructions to send a copy to me, every time the Law Reports publish them. You write well – your judgements are clear and engaging. I can still remember the case about the cabinet minister who used black magic to murder his mistress. You really should compile them into a book.’ The lines on his forehead deepen. ‘You once quoted an English judge. Didn’t he say that words are the tools of a lawyer’s trade?’
    ‘Soon I won’t be able to use those tools anymore.’
    ‘I’ll read them to you,’ he says. ‘Whenever you want to hear your own words again, I’ll read them aloud to you.’
    ‘Don’t you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you? By then I won’t be able to know what anyone says to me!’ He doesn’t flinch from my anger, but the sorrow in his eyes is unbearable to look at. ‘You’d better go,’ I say, pushing myself away from the post. My movements feel slow, heavy. ‘I’ve already made you late.’
    He glances at his watch. ‘It’s not important. Just some journalists I have to show around the estate, charm them into writing something complimentary.’
    ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’
    A smile skims across his face, capsizing an instant later. He wants to say something more, but I shake my head. He takes the three low steps down from the verandah, then slowly turns around to face me. All of sudden he looks like an old, old man. ‘What are you going to do?’
    ‘I am going for a walk.’

    * * *
    Ah Cheong hands a walking stick to me at the front door of the house. I shake my head, then take it from him. The stick has a comfortable heft. I look at it for a moment and then return it to him.
    Three or four steps later I stop and glance back over my shoulder. He is still standing there in the doorway, looking at me. I feel his eyes pinned on me all the way until I reach the opposite side of the pond. When I look back across the water, he has gone back inside the house.
    The air is clean, as if it has never been breathed by any living thing. After the clammy heat of Kuala Lumpur, the change is welcome. It is almost noon, but the sun has slunk behind the clouds.
    Lotus pads tile the surface of the pond. There are too many of them; I had not noticed it the previous evening when I arrived. The hedges on the opposite side of the pond had originally been shaped to resemble the waves of an ocean surging to the shore, but they have not been properly clipped and their lines are blurred. The pavilion’s roof beams are sagging. The entire structure seems to be melting, losing the memory of its shape. Leaves and dead insects and bark peelings cover the floor. Something slithers among them and I step back.
    The track leading into the garden is paved with rings of slate cut from drill cores discarded from the gold mines of Raub. Each turn in the path reveals a different view; at no point is the entire garden revealed, making it appear more extensive than it actually is.
    Ornaments lie half-hidden among the overgrown lallang grass: a granite torso; a sandstone Buddha’s head with his features smoothened by mist and rain; rocks with unusual shapes and striations. Stone lanterns, their eaves curtained with tattered spider webs, squat among the curling ferns. Yugiri was designed to look old from the first stone Aritomo set down, and the illusion of age he had created has been transformed into reality.
    Frederik’s workers have been