Thus the small, vulnerable, perhaps trivial secret, which was all of Ah Mei’s life so far, was a secret no longer, and now it seemed, without astonishment, I had always known Ah Mei to be Small Cloud. I had known of Sen, if not his name, since that day many months ago, when Ah Mei had blushed and cried: ‘The best ones never surrender, never.’ Ah Mei might have confessed, and revealed and informed, and reported on everyone, but not on Sen, not on Small Cloud, that part of her, that other she, in the jungle with Sen. Not on her love, if that was love. She had kept this one thing safe.
But now to save herself, she would betray that too, write another confession, detail more information. This time it would be final. There would be nothing left.
And so the hidden passion still alive that had come once, and once only, to the surface, would be extinguished at last. Ah Mei herself would put it out.
I waited for the police to come, with the cigarette paper in my hand, and I was dry and desolate, emptied of pity or compassion, knowing at last that there are places on the earth, in time and space, where is no space nor time, nor light nor air, nor any ground to grow for the strange weed called love.
- Makan angin: eat the wind, equivalent of the French: prendre l’air. ↵
13
TO RE-BEHOLD EACH STAR
Pang, the young and brilliant detective, brought Ah Mei back one morning. In spite of the rumours about him, I maintained a strange liking for Pang. His good looks, the laughing devilry of his eyes, the sinister gentleness of his voice when he interrogated a suspect fascinated me. Round him eddied the ugliest whispers: of beatings and of blackmail, of extortion and even, in the past, of a raping or two … but these wraiths vanished, when he appeared, as figures visioned in a mist dispel themselves when one draws nearer their unsubstantialness.
I decided that what I liked about Pang was his candid ruthless-ness, as one admires a pacing tiger through bars, so long as there are bars. Tigers here are not the limp and dreary eunuchs of zoos in colder climates. They come fresh from the jungle. About them hangs a loose, bright tremor of passion and restlessness, which long captivity will destroy.
‘There you are,’ said Pang, tenderly, with voice and look guiding Ah Mei forwards across the floor to stand before me. ‘There she is, doctor, safe and sound. I’m sure you’re very glad to see her back.’
His words, gentle, mocking, contained an impalpable menace. His laughter hung about me; it spiralled in the room, sinuous as the wooden arms of the strangling fig winding up its tree – choking it to death, preying upon its substance until it crumbles to nothingness – as with polite movements of his hands he gestured Ah Mei to sit down.