The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng Read Free Book Online

apart in half. Uncooked rice concealed in the hollowed-out fruit streamed to the ground. The old woman’s wails became louder as the constables dragged her into a hut by the roadside.
    ‘Clever,’ Magnus remarked, nodding at the mound of rice on the road.
    ‘The police once caught a rubber-tapper smuggling sugar out of his village,’ I said.
    ‘In a pineapple?’
    ‘He mixed it in the water in his canteen. It was one of the first cases I prosecuted.’
    ‘You’ve done a lot of cases like that?’ he said, as the SC raised the barrier and waved us through.
    ‘Enough to receive death threats,’ I said. ‘One of the reasons I resigned.’
    Less than half a mile further we stopped behind a line of lorries, their tarpaulins peeled back. Scrawny Chinese attendants sat on gunnysacks of rice, cooling themselves with tattered bamboo fans. ‘Good. I was worried we had missed the convoy,’ Magnus said, switching off the engine.
    ‘We’ll be crawling up the mountain,’ I said, looking at the vehicles.
    ‘Can’t be helped, meisiekind . But at least we’ll be escorted,’ Magnus said, pointing to two armoured scout cars at the head of the line.
    ‘Any recent attacks in Cameron Highlands?’
    Three years had passed since the Malayan Communist Party had launched its guerrilla war against the government, forcing the High Commissioner to declare a State of Emergency.
    The war showed no signs of ending, with the communist-terrorists – which the government referred to as ‘CTs’ or, more commonly, ‘bandits’ – keeping up regular attacks on rubber estates and tin mines.
    ‘They’ve been ambushing buses and army vehicles. But last week they showed up at a vegetable farm. Torched the buildings and killed the manager,’ Magnus said. ‘You haven’t exactly picked the best of times to visit us.’
    The sun reflected off the vehicles in front. I wound down my window but that only let in a rush of heat shimmering off the road. More cars had stopped behind us while we were waiting.
    Fifteen minutes later we were moving again. For security reasons, the undergrowth along the road had been hacked away and the trees felled, leaving only a narrow field of stumps. Far back from the road, beneath what had once been the cool shadows of trees, an aboriginal longhouse stood high on stilts, like an ark that had been washed up by a flood. An old woman in a sarong squatted on a tree stump and watched us, her breasts exposed, her lips painted bright red.
    Groves of bamboo leaned into the road, filtering the light into weak yellow patches. A lorry, overloaded with cabbages, careened down from the opposite direction, pushing us against the rock face on the side of the road; I could have reached out and pulled a clump of ferns growing on it. The temperature continued to drop, the air warmed only in the short stretches where the road dozed in the sun. At the Lata Iskandar waterfall, the sprays opened its net of whispers over us, rinsing the air with moisture that had travelled all the way from the mountain peaks, carrying with it the tang of trees and mulch and earth.
    We arrived in Tanah Rata an hour later, the road entering the village watched over by a red-bricked building perched on a rise. ‘You might want to explore the area,’ Magnus said, ‘but remember the village gates close at six.’
    Mist washed the lorries in front of us into grey, shapeless hulks. Magnus switched on his headlights, turning the world into a jaundiced murk. Visibility improved once we left the main street. ‘There’s The Green Cow,’ Magnus said. ‘We’ll go there for drinks one evening.’ We picked up speed, passing the Tanah Rata Golf Club. Looking at Magnus from the corner of my eye, I wondered how he and his wife had coped in the Japanese Occupation. Unlike so many of the Europeans living in Malaya, they had not evacuated when the Japanese soldiers came, but had remained in their home.
    ‘Here we are,’ he said, slowing down the car as we