The Harmony Silk Factory. Tash Aw
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His whole world – which he had created – would grow unendingly. The thought was cemented when, at that moment, he saw Johnny running up the stairs at the front of the house, leaping two steps at a time. Elation mixed with relief, that is what Tiger felt. Now he knew there was no more reason for him to continue the struggle.
‘Johnny,’ he called, no longer able to keep his thoughts to himself.
‘What’s the matter, Tiger? Are you all right?’ Johnny’s brow creased with uncertainty.
‘I want you to sit down with me,’ Tiger said.
Johnny sat perched on the edge of a chair facing Tiger. He could feel the frame of the chair pushing through the thin upholstery, cutting into his buttocks.
‘Courvosier?’ Tiger said, holding up the bottle of cognac.
‘No, thank you.’
‘It is said,’ Tiger said, his face glowing and puce-coloured, ‘that tending to your garden is good for your soul. I can certainly testify to that. After a day’s work I feel cleansed. Funny, isn’t it?’ He chuckled gently.
Johnny looked mystified.
‘I don’t know how to explain this feeling to you. It is as if the work I put into looking after my plants makes me a better man. It makes me feel that I am a good person –’
‘You are a good person –’
‘– and for those few hours that I am in the garden, none of the bad things I have done in my life matter very much; they do not exist in my garden.’
‘You have never done any bad things.’
Tiger smiled. ‘Don’t speak. Listen. You know I have worried about the shop. You know I am an old man now. That does not mean I do not care about the future of the shop, the future of everyone who works there, everyone who depends on the shop. I care. But I am old and tired, and soon I will die. I have spent much time in my garden lately, I know, but I feel no harm can come from this. Why? Because I have you, and you are ready for greater things.’
‘Greater things,’ Johnny repeated in his blank monotone.
‘Yes, greater things! Tell me – what would happen to the shop if I was dead?’
‘Do not say that.’
‘But what if? What if? What would you do then?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know.’ Johnny’s face was stubborn and dull.
‘Do you think the shop would survive?’
‘Yes.’ Johnny’s reply was instinctive.
‘Why do you think it will survive?’
Johnny did not answer.
‘Because of you. All that is mine will be yours upon my death.’
Johnny did not protest, but remained expressionless as before.
The following weeks saw a small revolution in the textile business in the valley. Following the example set by the larger companies in KL and Penang, Johnny introduced village-to-village selling. It had always occurred to him that there were many people who might have wanted to visit the shop but, for one reason or another, were not able to. In many parts of the valley, the roads were little more than dirt tracks twisting through the jungle. When the rains came they washed mud on to the roads, and in the hot season the dust was so heavy and the sun so strong that a traveller could barely open his eyes. If these people could not come to the shop, Johnny thought, the shop would go to them.
Every Tuesday Johnny would cycle out into the jungle, taking with him a selection of cloths, heading for small villages beyond the reaches of the single tarred road running between Kampar and Ipoh. Each journey would last two full days and nights, and on the morning of the third day Johnny would reappear at the shop with no merchandise left on his bicycle. He built a little wooden platform on the back of his bicycle, fashioned from an old piece of teak which had once been the seat of a chair, worn smooth through years of use. Johnny lashed this tightly to his bicycle, and then tied the bales of cloth to it so that they stuck out at right angles. He soon became a familiar sight in the smaller villages of the valley – a stern-faced man riding a funny contraption which seemed less like a bicycle than a moving pile of textiles. The children looked forward to hearing the ring of his bell every few weeks, for he always brought with him a large bag of boiled sweets which he would distribute generously.
But sweets were not all Johnny brought. In each of the villages, he would seek out the people known to have communist sympathies. He brought news, from Tiger, of what the party was doing in the rest of the valley. He told them about secret lectures and campaigns to raise funds for the movement in China. He gathered information too, and soon he knew which farmers had sons who wanted to join the party, which villages were not sympathetic to the Cause, which people could be relied upon to provide donations. He knew the villages as he knew people – some were friends, some reluctant allies, others plain enemies. There were beautiful ones, ugly ones, dull ones, naughty ones. Soon he knew everything. More than Tiger himself.
On these trips Johnny began to feel a swelling sense of duty. Not only was he working to cement the future of the shop, he was imparting the word of the party. True, this wasn’t quite the same as hand-to-hand combat in the jungle, but representing the party in his way was surely more noble and demanding. His way required cunning beyond that of a simple soldier. It required charisma and intelligence and, above all, the ability to read and write. In this respect Johnny had became superior to the other men, for he was now armed with literacy. On each journey to the outlying villages he took with him the Communist Manifesto in English, together with a pocket dictionary he had found in Tiger’s library. He also took an exercise book in which he wrote out all the words he did not understand. Fraternity. Absolutism. Antagonistic. Jurisprudence. He wrote these down on one side of the page and on the other he wrote out the meanings of the words in Chinese, simplifying and paraphrasing them to facilitate the memorising process (Proletariat | Me).Then he simply looked at the lists of words, learning them by heart. As he cycled along the uneven tracks, veering to avoid the rocks and the potholes and craters carved out by the floods and the droughts, he spoke the English words aloud, letting the Chinese translations echo silently in his head. At first they seemed strange and fascinating. Sometimes his voice seemed not to belong to him – he did not recognise the person who made these wonderful sounds. But soon he grew to love these noises. He loved feeling the words form at the base of his throat and then well up in his mouth before dancing in the quiet jungle air.
When at home, he began to creep more frequently into Tiger’s library. For a long time, this was a place which had intimidated and mystified him, but now it began to feel warmer. Its allure became stronger yet less forbidding. But which ones should he read? They were still indistinguishable from each other. He could by now read most of the words on the spines, but the names – they were names, weren’t they? – remained shadowy and foreign. Once, he ran his fingers along the spines of a row of guava-coloured books, feeling the indented gold letters with his fingertips. Perhaps the touch of his flesh against the printed letters would suddenly reveal all kinds of hidden secrets. He came away, breathlessly, with A Choice of Shelley’s Verse and something by Dornford Yates. Those two books kept him busy for many weeks. He filled three whole exercise books with lists of new words which would stay with him for the rest of his life. As an old man he would often quote Shelley, muttering under his breath if he thought no one was listening. The fitful alternations of the rain this, the Deep’s untrampled floor that. I don’t think he ever fully understood the meaning of it all.
From time to time, though, he still felt a shiver of excitement when he thought about the dark, rough life of a soldier like Gun. He had once visited the home of a small-village communist lieutenant and spied, through a half-open door, a rifle propped up against the wall. It leaned brazenly on the wooden slats like a household implement to be picked up and used casually at any time. That night Johnny slept in the next room, not ten feet from the gun. He dreamed he was walking barefoot through the night-clad jungle holding that same rifle. He walked into a clearing lit