And nature, as he used to say, is not a peaceful thing. It’s not a gentle breeze and the sun coming up over the mountains, as they’d have you believe in children’s books. It’s not little pink buds or a rhapsody in green. (Have you ever noticed that what passes for green in this country is really black? An infinity of black leaves?) Nature is a cruel and conniving affair, he used to say to me when we were alone together, which was often. It’s aggressive, and surprisingly fatal. The weak are killed, first tormented and then killed, and the strong are nourished by the rot and decay. So don’t let them talk to you about how peaceful it all is, the wind in the trees and the sound of the crickets. The crickets are alone; they drag their wings across a vein out of which teeth grow, in the hope that another of their kind will find them, either to mate or to fight. Don’t let them talk to you about the sound of the crickets, or quote you poems about roses. I’m not saying flowers shouldn’t be picked and enjoyed for their beauty, I’m only saying that your picking and enjoying are part of their plan, not vice versa.

Not that he always talked like that. After a good meal in the presence of friends, he could carry on for hours about the prehistoric ginkgo that holds the knowledge of dinosaurs, the bromeliads that survive on motes of dust and droplets of humidity, or the moss garden of Saihoji, whose pond is covered by a skin of algae through which the rain falls peaceably to its death. He could philosophize about the garden of Epicurus, or captivate with stories of his adventures into the rain forest, or his youthful travels in Asia, where he’d followed the trail of Basho as far as Haguro. It all depended on his mood, which could be overturned like a bottle of ink, sending the blackness spilling. In the final years, there were no longer many friends left. But at the beginning they came from all over the world, famous writers, artists, dignitaries of all kinds, to receive a private tour of Three Winds and sign the gold-tasseled visitors’ book.

For twenty-one years I served as personal secretary to Latin America’s greatest landscape architect. They were dark years in our country’s history, but outside the sun shone, as it has always shone here, and always will. Behind closed doors, in basements, in warehouses, in secret complexes, the sun did not shine, but outside it shone always. A garden depends on sun. A garden is an arrangement of light, he used to say, one has to think how the sun will set on it, how it will rise, from which direction it will shine, how it will pass through; how every leaf will reveal or obscure.