The Secrets of a Fire King (14 page)

87

tial as the dreams that demanded them. My father sat, still and silent in his white room, and I was angry with him for asking so much from us. I wanted to tell my mother this, to explain how the anger had seared away the panic, to share the calmness that, even now, was growing up within me. Whatever had plunged my father into silence, and Stephen into violence, wouldn’t find me. I had a bandaged ankle, but the rest of me was whole and strong.

My mother pulled her long hair away from her face, then let it fall.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she said. “You’re okay, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fi ne.”

I went to my room. The white curtains lifted, luminous in the darkness, and I heard the distant sound of running water from the bathroom. I took off all my clothes, very slowly, and let them lie where they fell on the floor. The stars outside were bright, the sky clear. The curtains unfolded, brushing against my skin in a swell of night air, and what I remembered, standing there in the dark, was the way it felt to be falling.

The Invitation

Joyce Gentry’s day began badly, early in the morning, when she discovered that the slender branches of her mango trees were crawling with ants. Not the tiny black ones, but the large coppery ants that seemed to have adhesive on their feet, clinging obstinately to her cloth gloves and stinging her wrists before she could brush them off. She cried out, more from the knowledge that her trees were endangered than from the sting of their bites. Jamal came at once. He was a little man, short and hard and thin, with a narrow mustache and deft hands, a habit-ual expression of worried concern on his face.

Fortunately, he knew exactly what to do. A kettle of water poured down each nest, some concoction of herbs slathered on each dissolving anthill, and a stiff spray of the hose to clear the branches. Joyce watched with fascination as the ants tried to escape, spilling frenetically out of adjacent tunnels, carrying their eggs. What resilient creatures they were! Still, she felt no pity for them. They had destroyed half a dozen trees already, and it was
The Invitation

89

just luck that she’d caught them before they’d chewed their way into the bark and killed these young trees as well. Jamal worked quickly in the rising heat of the morning, ringing each trunk with pesticide and raking up the ruined anthills, and she brought him a glass of iced tea from the kitchen when he fi nished.

“You are so good,” Joyce said as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bright bandanna. Jamal looked down, as if embarrassed, and she went on, extravagantly, “I would be simply lost without you.”

Jamal kept his eyes lowered, but Joyce could tell he was pleased. She rarely had the chance to say what she felt to him; Sid was such a stickler about that. He managed a factory and disapproved of speaking with employees regarding anything but routine matters. If he heard Joyce pay a compliment, or even make an observation on the weather, he became so terribly annoyed. “I deal with people like this every day,” he’d tell her, pouring himself another shot of scotch, “and once you cross that line with them, you’re lost. Out goes your authority, right out the window, and you can forget about getting any sort of work out of them after that.”

Sid was especially stern in regard to Jamal, for Joyce had not hired him in the ordinary way, through want ads and interviews.

Instead, she had found him quite by accident on a day when she had gotten lost in a poorer section of the city, her big dark car moving slowly through the narrow lanes, children fl ocking at the edges of the road to watch her pass. The area was all dirt and squalor, the houses rickety, built of wood scraps and corrugated tin, the drainage ditches oozing green, stinking of rat and refuse.

Yet in the midst of this depressing scene, Joyce had come upon a garden so enchanting that she had stopped her car at once. Hibiscus and bougainvillea flamed behind a wooden railing, and hundreds of flowers bloomed in window boxes, in tin cans, in neatly tended beds. Jamal had been standing in the middle of this garden on a little stool, watering several dozen pots of hanging orchids, patiently, with a cup.

Joyce had gotten out of her car, her heels sinking in the soft earth, the air making her skin go damp and oily. She had sized
90

The Secrets of a Fire King

Jamal up, his silence, his deft, long-fingered hands, the beauty of his garden, and offered him a job on the spot. It was a daring, reckless thing to do—that’s what everyone told her later—and she’d never even asked for references. Yet Jamal had transformed her garden, and now she was the envy of her neighbors. Privately, Joyce liked to think that she had a knack for these things, that she could see in people qualities that others often missed. Sid, for instance, was often blind to the good in other people, and he would never quite trust Jamal, no matter how many times Joyce said, “It was the flowers, the way he tended to his fl owers. No one with such a garden could be a demon, darling.” Jamal drained the tea quickly, sucking the juice from the wedge of lemon Joyce had placed on the rim of the glass.

“I’d like to stake these trees today,” Joyce said, gesturing to the row of slender mangoes. “The rains are coming soon, and I don’t want them to get toppled over.”

“But Madame,” Jamal said, looking past the trees to some point on the horizon. “That is not a good idea, I think.”

“Why not?” Joyce asked. “What makes you think it’s not?” Jamal shrugged. “It will not help your trees,” he said. “Putting stakes in the ground today.”

Joyce waited for him to go on, but Jamal was as uncomfortable in English as she was in Malay, and he did not explain. The sun glared brightly off the concrete patio and for a long moment Joyce stood, considering. It was true that Jamal’s advice, though often odd, almost always turned out to be correct: he had advised slashing the older mango trees to force them to bear fruit, and this had happened just as he predicted. Yet Joyce was thinking too of Sid, who just last week had come home exasperated because a surveyor had refused to go near the site of the new factory. It was, the man claimed, a spiritual place, full of ghosts. “A hunk of rock,” Sid fumed, “in the middle of the jungle, and he wouldn’t go near it. And he was an educated man!” Perhaps it was because Sid was away that Joyce heard his voice so strongly. He’d warned her against these new trees in the first place. She could imagine him coming back and fi nding the
The Invitation

91

work undone. He’d say it was laziness, pure and simple, Jamal’s ingenious way of getting out of work.

“What is it?” Joyce insisted. “Is it the weather? Is that why you don’t want to stake the trees today?” She gazed at Jamal, waiting for him to answer, but he only lifted his shoulders lightly in a shrug.

“Well,” she said crisply, thinking of Sid. “I think it’s an excellent idea, nonetheless. I want it done by nightfall.” The garden dealt with, Joyce hurried off to run her morning errands. To the post offi ce, first of all, where she waited in an an-noyingly slow line, and to the market, where she bought a silver pin, a birthday present for her niece. Finally she ate a light lunch at the club, the ocean breeze flowing through her hair.

When she got back home the postman was just leaving on his little motor scooter, and Joyce paused in the cool hall, going through the mail eagerly, quickly, looking for the gilded envelope that would be the invitation to the sultan’s birthday party.

Last year at this time it had already arrived. Today, however, there was nothing but an electric bill and a fashion magazine six months out of date. Joyce tossed them down, feeling a little fl urry of irritation. The sultan’s birthday was only three weeks away, and she would need to have a dress made, perhaps take a trip to Singapore for shoes. She would need time to prepare, for the invitation was quite special, not one to take lightly, not at all. The sultan and his family were a visible presence in town, with a police escort and flashing sirens every time they went out, but only the most fortunate of the expatriate community ever set foot inside the palace. Last year Joyce had done a little favor for the sultan’s wife—smuggled in some pansy seeds for her indoor garden—and that had resulted in her invitation. This year she had sent a whole box of such seeds, elaborately wrapped, and now she waited.

Joyce glanced at her watch and sighed. The new wife was due to arrive in less than an hour. Years ago, these initiation teas had been less frequent and more exciting, but even though the expatriate community had grown to nearly fifty people, Joyce re-92

The Secrets of a Fire King

fused to give up the practice of inviting them for tea. Joyce herself had been the first wife out, nearly thirty years ago, and she would never forget how much she’d longed for company, for someone older and wiser to give her some advice.

It made her smile a little now to remember how eagerly she’d come here, studying the atlas where the long bent finger of Ma-laysia dipped into the South China Sea. She’d imagined an ad-venturous life, rich with silks and spices and exotic people. The reality had been quite a shock. In those days the rubber factory was nothing but a glorified quonset hut, with hardly a village between here and Singapore, six hours south by car and ferry. Sid had been terribly busy trying to make a go of his new business, and they had not been able to have children, as they had hoped to do. Those languorous days, dissolving into years, had been so lonely that Joyce had often thought she would go mad. It was only after a decade, when the factory expanded, that the others started coming. All the wives, arriving with their leather suitcases, wiping their foreheads and squinting, bewildered, into the harsh midday light. From the beginning they had looked to her for help, and Joyce, grateful for the company, glad for an end to the long, still afternoons, had done what she could.

Now she hurried upstairs and flung open her closet doors, flicking the hangers back and forth, inhaling the faint scent of perfume. On an impulse she pulled out the gold silk gown on its padded hanger. It was a cool rush, shimmering in her hands like light.

In deference to local custom the cut was very modest, with a high neckline and sleeves to the wrists, but this was subverted by the way the fabric clung to the body at every movement. Joyce had worn it to the sultan’s last birthday party, causing the room to go absolutely silent at her entrance. She had paused to take it all in, the huge brass vases stuffed with orchids, the full orchestra, the marble floors, and the sultan himself in a white linen suit, surrounded by women dressed in bright shades of silk, like an arrangement of exotic flowers. Even now it gave Joyce a thrill to remember, all eyes turned in her direction, the tapping of her heels echoing in the sudden hush as she walked the length of the room.

She sighed, reluctantly putting the gown away. She could not
The Invitation

93

wear it again this year, though she doubted she would fi nd another dress that was its equal. She dressed quickly in a simple linen sheath and went downstairs to make the tea.

The new arrival was called Marcella Frank, and on the telephone she had sounded shy to the point of being demure. This, however, turned out not to be the case. Joyce glimpsed her through the window, arriving on an old-fashioned bicycle, her back straight, her dark hair and white dress vibrant against the shimmering air. Joyce went to the patio, where Marcella was slipping off her shoes and talking to Jamal. They were speaking Malay, and Joyce, who understood only a few words, was amazed.

Jamal had spoken only rarely in the four years he had worked for her, but now he seemed quickened, charged, his voice fl ashing.

Joyce had never seen him so; she stopped and took the scene in.

Marcella turned and smiled. “Hello,” she said, stepping inside, her bare feet slapping lightly on the marble fl oor. She seemed very young to Joyce, fresh despite the heat and her recent bicycle ride. “I was just admiring your beautiful yard.” Joyce glanced at her garden, frowned slightly. The word

“yard” was one Americanism she had never gotten used to; it conjured up an industrial wasteland in her mind.

“The garden,” she said. “Yes, Jamal does wonders.”

“Your fruit trees especially,” Marcella added. Beyond the patio, heat shimmered against the foliage like a translucent veil.

“They’re really wonderful.” She turned and spoke again in Malay, some rapid observation that caused Jamal to laugh, bringing his two hands together in a gesture of pure pleasure that Joyce had never seen.

“Jamal is staking the young mangoes,” Joyce said. “We’re worried about the monsoons knocking them down.” She smiled at Jamal, but he had turned his attention back to the garden and did not answer. She watched him bend over a bush of fl aming hibiscus, his hands moving deftly, silently, amid the leaves.

“Please, sit down,” she added, stepping back and gesturing to the living room, where ceiling fans stirred the air and their drinks were waiting. “Make yourself at home.”

Marcella ran one hand through her dark hair and sank into
94

The Secrets of a Fire King

the nearest armchair. “Iced tea!” she exclaimed, reaching to pour herself a glass. “Do you mind? I’m absolutely parched.” Joyce smiled and nodded, gesturing to the table, then watched as Marcella took a long, thirst-quenching drink. She was reminded of her own young self, the bright energy she’d had, the way that the years, the endless heat, had transformed it into a sort of entropy. “I’m so glad you could come by, Marcella,” she began, sitting down and pouring a glass of tea for herself. “You must feel free to ask me any questions, let me know whatever I can do to help. I’ve lived here for nearly thirty years, you see, and I know the country rather well. So I feel it’s my duty, as well as my privilege, to offer what little assistance I can.” Joyce paused. The rest of her speech—well practiced after all these years—was ready to slip from her tongue, but Marcella Frank was making only the barest pretense of interest. Her dark eyes glanced around the room, taking in Joyce’s things—the full set of china, the matching furniture and curtains—as if she found them faintly amusing.