Sundown is soft reconciliation, content, sky and earth like spent foes looking upon each other with lovely peace. It is the time of makan angin, eating the wind; the promenade, the swim, the drive, the amble; the game of tennis at the club; sitting on doorsteps in smile and talk and silence piecing friendship; official time for the first stengah; the time of Malay Chinese Tamil young boys plunging similarly gleaming bodies naked along the goldlit shore; a time for cobras to wake, dangle meek heads above their baskets, flick slivered tongues as the flute gathers volume and a few white-shirted good-tempered spectators; a time of smart rap and chop of knives at ambulant food stalls waking to swift lively music of supper; the blue smoke of charcoal grids, where satay sellers spit meat chunks on bamboo sticks for roasting; on the green lawns called padang, the school-children crowding to play; time for the rebirth of the watcher, dream-spinning day’s fragments into woven coherence; reflecting in coolness on the time of the sun; sniffing the chilli-pepper smell of a tree, the undertow of sour-sweet sewers, the frangipani, feeling the bird-sifted breeze swell the chequered sails of the russet junks, the swelling canvas of Malay racing boats, finger the thatched roofs of the boats of the aborigines, who row with crossed paddles their shallops up-current to sell deep-sea crabs at the market; watching the Tamil grass-cutters swing their scythes, aureate with sundown gold; discovering the loveliness of Ah Mei’s face, gold pink in the garden near the hibiscus blooming red stars over its protuberant greenness, Ah Mei fumbling an orange peacock flower, looking at the orange sun whirling above the palms and laughing because she is free.
News had come of her pardon some days ago, and running upstairs twisted in happiness she had laughed in gusts like sobs: ‘I am free, free.’
Today she had come walking gently down the gravel path, and told of her wish to visit her old village at the Dragon Boat Festival. Already she had missed the sweeping of the graves, having been busy in the prison that very day.
Together, neither knowing the day nor the month in our tropical forgetfulness, we turned indoors to look at the calendar.
The Ever Handsome and Joyous Sports Co. Ltd, owning a tumbled shop next to the cemented basketball court of the Hokkien Athletic Association (where at night, in the blue flare of arc lamps, the Chinese school boys and girls played strenuous games applauded by enthusiastic polyglottic crowds), issued thoughtful yearly calendars of modest size (twelve foolscap pages) and encyclopaedic aspiration.