‘Ah, these women, always going shopping to Hongkong … they can’t resist it … Hongkong is so cheap, and there’s everything there.’

He turned away. Luke saw his back, more weary than his face. The car drove up, the chauffeur opened the door. Then Luke was there too, helping the old man in, his hand gentle with unconcluded motion of tenderness. Quo Boon sat back and closed his eyes as the car drove away, leaving Luke with the remote pang of all partings lingering in his breast.

*  *  *

9 p.m. to midnight. Zodiacal Sign: Fish and the Water.
Mystic Significance: Root and Rebirth.

Possession is not achieved in the first embrace. It is continual surrender to see, to hear, to know. Seeker groping to a renewal fresh as Creation’s first instant, return to the hour when Light was new on grass and leaf, water skin and sky. The world is yours to own.

Heat-bloated, the fragments of a heat-dazed day lie untouched till sundown, when earth no longer cowers beneath the demon eye of heat beating its glare in sap and blood. The world explodes its heart of colour before night’s dark peace.

Amber, jade, and vermilion, saffron melting into rose, apple-green, amethyst, and lilac, ripple round the astonished orange globe revolving above indigo coconut palms and hills; boats are ebony arcs etched on water glowing opal; fishermen deep to hips in luminous water hold black nets like ploughs, driving the solid light of the water before them; sibilant swifts whisk orderly evolutions above the domineering rose-grey government buildings; the green China-tile roofs of the Sultan’s palace are a technicolour castle on a hill. Cosy Asian family cars wheel along the lavender road, crammed with mothers, multiple babies, assorted children, a score of pointing hands, a parcel of leaning bodies, a bevy of bobbing heads, an exultation of laughing mouths, oscillating in all directions and in happy swallow twitter giving Father enthusiastic suggestions above the head of his instructor, while behind the vehicle rattles the big L plate of the Learner. This is sundown.