The River and the Book (12 page)

Even if the Book is lost for ever, even if no one but me remembers it, we are the Keepers.

In the weeks when I was reading Jane Watson’s book, Ling Ti dropped in every few days to find out how it was going. He would sit in my kitchen with Mely purring on his lap, the lamplight shining on the lenses of his glasses, and demand to know what I had read, and what I thought of it. He behaved like a teacher who was giving a lesson. He listened intently. I don’t think anybody I know listens as hard as Ling Ti. When what I said didn’t make sense, because I had misread something or I didn’t know the meanings of the words, he would take the book and read out the passage, and we would talk it over until I understood it. I asked him once why he bothered, and he said that it mattered, that what was happening to the River people was important, and what happened to me was important too. I asked him if he was still planning to write an editorial that would tear Jane Watson limb from limb, and he replied that he wasn’t sure any more if that was the right thing to do.

He visited the day after I had finished reading. I told him then that Jane Watson hadn’t mentioned the Book or the Keepers, and how it had made me feel. Ling Ti screwed up his face. “Would you have felt better if she had?” he asked.

The question surprised me, and so I thought about it before I replied. “It might have made me feel worse,” I said. “She would have been writing about something she didn’t understand at all. She would have got it wrong.”

“Perhaps she was being tactful, because she knew she didn’t understand it,” said Ling Ti. “Or perhaps she didn’t think it was relevant, compared to what is happening to the River.”

It sounded as if he were defending her.

“The Book was the most precious thing in our village,” I said indignantly. “How could she pretend it didn’t exist? It was disrespectful. Especially to my grandmother. Jane Watson didn’t seem to think that she mattered at all.” I didn’t add: it was disrespectful to
me
, but I meant that too.

Ling Ti frowned, and was silent for a while, so the only sound in the kitchen was the popping of the oil lamp and Mely’s purr. Then he looked at me, and I saw that his face was unusually serious.

“Sim,” he said, “Jane Watson is here, in the city. She is staying at the university for a year, as a guest, and I know how to find her.”

For a few moments I couldn’t breathe. “Jane Watson?” I said, stupidly. “Here?”

“Yes. I could take you to visit her, and you could ask her about the Book yourself.”

It seemed to me that Ling Ti looked slightly guilty as he said this.

“You’ve known for a while, haven’t you?” I said.

“A couple of weeks,” he said. “I … wanted to be sure before I told you. I know people in the faculty, and they put us in touch. She wants to interview me.”

“Why?” I said blankly.

Ling Ti smiled. “Because I am a great poet, of course. I thought I could take you too.”

After all this time, after all my long searching, I almost refused. I told Ling Ti that the last person I ever wanted to see was Jane Watson. I was filled with a consuming anger. I stood up and threw the book at Ling Ti and shouted that he should have told me before, that he should have warned me, that I didn’t want his stupid help, sticking his stupid nose into my business. Mely yowled and ran out of the room. I pummelled Ling Ti’s chest with my fists and he was forced to hold me back so I wouldn’t hurt him. He just said my name, over and over again, until I calmed down; and then I burst into tears, and he held me until I stopped crying.

“Sim,” he said again, and he wiped the tears from my cheeks with his fingers. Then he kissed me. No man has ever kissed me before, and for a little while I forgot all about Jane Watson and my village and the Book. I forgot about everything except Ling Ti.

I feel raw, as if all my feelings have come to the surface of my skin and there is nothing to protect me from them. It’s because at last I will speak to Jane Watson, but it is also because of Ling Ti. He told me that he hadn’t meant to kiss me that day, but that he had wanted to ever since we met. “I didn’t know how,” he said to me yesterday. “You are so prickly, Sim.”

“Me?” I said. “Prickly? What about you? You fight with almost everyone you know.”

“That’s because I am a great poet,” he said.

“You are also the vainest person I know,” I said.

“You know it’s true.”

“You’re not greater than Anna.”

“That’s true too,” he said, smiling. “It’s all nonsense, anyway.”

Anna and Icana had known how Ling Ti felt all along, and when we walked into the Stray Dog holding hands, their faces lit up and they clapped. Icana says that is because they are sentimental romantics and they couldn’t help hoping that one day I would see that we belonged together. Anna says she mostly wanted us to get together because I am the only possible cure for Ling Ti’s vanity. They teased us, which made me feel awkward, but then the music started and we danced and I forgot all about being shy. At this time, in this place, I am happy. It is a happiness that is threaded through with a terrible sadness: I have lost so much, and found so much, and it’s hard to disentangle one thing from the other.

Mely is jealous. She didn’t speak to me for two days, but fortunately she likes Ling Ti too much to stay angry. For those two days, she made my life miserable. She refused to eat or to come into the flat, and hid in the fig tree, sulking. Ling Ti was cunning and brought some chicken livers over, and we left them on the sill as we sat in the kitchen talking. Mely can’t resist chicken livers, and it wasn’t long before we saw her in the tree, her nose twitching. We pretended we hadn’t noticed her, and step by step she crept to the window, until she was hunched on the closest branch. She was very hungry, but she is also very stubborn, and she knew that if she ate the livers, she would have to forgive us. She sat on that branch for more than half an hour. In the end she came back inside, and when she had eaten the livers she pretended that she hadn’t been offended, after all. “I have been very busy,” she told me haughtily. “I have lots of friends you don’t know about.”

Now she says it will be all right as long as everything remains the same. The problem is that nothing ever does.

Last night all my dearest friends came over: Anna and Icana and Yuri and Ling Ti. It was a wonderful evening. I made my favourite rice dish and everyone brought wine and sweets, and we sat on the carpet on cushions and gossiped and joked. When we had finished eating, we talked for a long time about Jane Watson.

Ling Ti has made an appointment to visit her next week, and I have agreed to go with him. He hasn’t told her that he is bringing me. She thinks that she will be interviewing him for her new book.

“An ambush,” said Anna, her eyes gleaming.

“Yes,” said Ling Ti. “I think it will be best to surprise her. The main thing will be to get the Book back.”

“What if she doesn’t have the Book?” I asked. This is my greatest fear: I have no reason to think that she will have it with her. She might even have sold it.

“If she doesn’t have it, she can tell you where it is,” said Yuri.

“If I were her, I’d just deny everything,” said Icana, frowning. “You can’t prove that she took it, or that she has it.”

The thought of Jane Watson denying her crime made me cold with rage. “If she does, Ling Ti should write about it, and put it in his magazine,” I said. “Everyone must know what she did. And we should tell the university that she ought to be thrown out. I think that she should be exposed as a fraud, even if she gives the Book back to me.”

“There’s a problem, though,” said Ling Ti, glancing quickly at me. “Jane Watson isn’t actually a fraud. She’s important, Sim. You read her book about the River people. Even you have to admit that it matters. Nobody else is writing about the things she is, and her books make people take notice, especially overseas.”

I sat mutinously silent. Ling Ti and I had been having this argument for days. Ling Ti reads dozens of journals and papers, including foreign ones, and is very well informed. He keeps telling me that I should read more.

Patiently, Ling Ti ran through his arguments. He said that Jane Watson’s visit to the university was already controversial, because her books had made her powerful enemies. If those people could find a way of disgracing her, they would be delighted. He said that making a scandal would only play into the hands of the people who wanted to silence her. “Do you want to help them, Sim?” he said. “Because, if you destroyed Jane Watson, that’s exactly what you would be doing.”

“I want her to be punished for what she did,” I said. I knew I was right. But Ling Ti was also right, and underneath I knew that, too.

“She might be feeling bad about it, and want to give the Book back anyway,” said Anna. “She might be relieved if you ask for it.”

“If she does feel bad, why hasn’t she given it back already?” I said. “She’s had plenty of time.”

“Perhaps you could threaten her,” said Yuri. “You know, if she won’t admit it. Perhaps you could tell her that you will expose her as a thief, and make her give you the Book that way.”

“In the end, it’s up to you,” said Icana. “The wrong is yours.”

“Yes,” I said. “The wrong is mine.”

So I went to see Jane Watson. That was two days ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

I was very nervous. I took the day off work and Ling Ti picked me up from my flat after lunch. I had spent the entire morning trying to decide what to wear. It’s not as if I had much choice: I don’t own many clothes. In the end, I wore a plain black pencil skirt and a white shirt. I put on the gold earrings my grandmother gave me when I was presented at the temple, and I braided my hair, which is now almost as long as it was when I lived in the village. I wanted to look stern and smart and important, like someone it wouldn’t be easy to dismiss.

We hardly spoke on the way: I think Ling Ti was almost as nervous as I was. We took the tram to the university. I had never been there before, but Ling Ti knew it well, as he studied there for a year before he left to become a great poet. Inside one of the big new buildings we caught a lift up to the seventh floor and came out into a green-painted corridor lined with numbered doors.

“We want number twenty-three,” said Ling Ti.

It didn’t take long to find it. We stood in front of the door for a few moments, as if we were preparing ourselves for an ordeal. Then Ling Ti winked at me. Although my heart was hammering in my chest, he made me smile. He raised his fist and knocked on the door, and I heard Jane Watson’s voice calling for us to come in.

It was a small, stuffy room, just big enough to hold an enormous desk that was piled with papers, with a tiny window that looked out on a ventilator shaft. The walls were lined with shelves that held stacks of books and files. Jane Watson was standing behind her desk to greet Ling Ti. She was smartly dressed in a woollen suit, but otherwise looked much the same as when I had last seen her, although there were deep circles under her eyes. She gave me a surprised glance, and then turned to Ling Ti and gave him a wide smile.

It felt too ordinary. After all the years of searching, after all the pain and loss, there should have been thunder and lightning. Ling Ti and I should have burst through the door like warriors, brandishing swords over our heads. Jane Watson should have cowered before us and begged for mercy. Instead we crowded awkwardly into a shabby room that was scarcely big enough to hold the three of us.

Jane Watson didn’t even recognize me. She thought so little of what she had done that she didn’t even remember my face. That’s when I lost my temper, silently inside, as if a switch had been flicked on.

“Ling Ti,” Jane Watson said, in her language. “What a great pleasure.”

“A great pleasure to meet you too,” said Ling Ti. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought a friend. She wants to ask you some questions.”

Jane Watson frowned. “I was hoping to interview you, and I don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “But I suppose that’s OK.”

“I think you’ve met her before,” said Ling Ti, stepping aside.

This was my cue, and I stepped forward, holding my hand out in greeting. Jane Watson took my hand, looking puzzled. “I don’t recall…”

“This is Simbala Da Kulafir Atan Mucarek Abaral Effenda Nuum,” said Ling Ti.

“Hello, Jane Watson,” I said in my language. My voice was shaking, not with nervousness now but with anger. “I am the Keeper, and you stole my Book.”

Jane Watson recognized me at last. She looked shocked, and then a deep blush rose up from her neck, until her whole face was red. She sat down slowly in her chair, staring at me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She turned to Ling Ti and spoke in her language again. “I don’t know why you’ve…”

A great disgust rose up in my throat at her denial. “Jane Watson,” I said, “I remember when you came to my village, and stayed with my family and ate our bread and salt. We trusted you. And then you stole our most precious thing. You stole the Book that belonged to me and my mother and my grandmother and all my mothers before me. It doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to us, and I have come to take it back.”

While I talked, Jane Watson’s face returned to its normal colour. She looked me straight in the eye and said again that she had no idea what I was talking about, and she reached for the phone on the desk. Very gently, Ling Ti took her hand and lifted it away.

“Miss Watson,” he said. “Don’t call security. Let’s not make a scandal. Please don’t insult us by pretending that you don’t know what we’re talking about. If you don’t return the Book to its Keeper, I will write about it and everyone will know what you have done. What will that do to your career? Imagine what people will say. The great defender of the River people, a cultural vandal and thief!”

There was a long silence. Jane Watson had now turned very pale. She licked her lips, like a nervous lizard.

“I’m surprised to find that even you are a lackey of the powerful, Ling Ti,” she said. “I thought better of you.”

“You know very well that I am not.”