The Secrets of a Fire King Read online

  “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 flocking 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 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 flowers. 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 finding the 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 office, first of all, where she waited in an annoyingly 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 flurry 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 refused 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 Malaysia dipped into the South China Sea. She’d imagined an adventurous 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 wear it again this year, though she doubted she would find 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 flashing. 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 floor. 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 flaming 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 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.

  “Thirty years,” Marcella repeated, turning her attention back to Joyce. “You must have seen so many changes. Sometimes I look around and wonder what it was like here, say, fifty years ago, or a hundred. All jungle, I imagine. Lovely, unspoiled jungle.”

  “Yes, it must have been a completely different world,” Joyce said. “My husband always says he was born in the wrong century. He’s always saying to me, ‘Fifty years earlier, old girl, and we’d still have had an empire.’”

  Marcella’s face sobered; all traces of amusement fell away, and her expression became very distant. She sipped her tea and stared out at the garden where Jamal was burying stakes in a ring around each mango tree. “I imagine Encik Jamal has a different opinion regarding that,” she said at last.

  Now it was Joyce’s turn to be silenced. She felt a blush of anger rise on her face. This girl—this Marcella Frank, just off the plane—was judging her! As if a bit of nostalgia for the lost, romantic past made Joyce herself a staunch imperialist. She glanced out the window at Jamal, remembering the rapid exchange he’d had with Marcella Frank, and her own futile attempts to learn the local language. She had tried, at first, but she had no facility, and when her early attempts, practiced so conscientiously before a mirror, had elicited only soft giggles or confusion, she had given up. It was hard enough to communicate even in her own language. Between herself and this young American, for instance, there was a chasm, a gap, into which fell all the connotations of her sentences. It was as if her words were stripped of all their nuances and reached her guest in a bare and unadorned state, susceptible, then, to all the unknown meanings the girl herself attached to words. Still, Joyce took a deep breath. After all, she had been here so long, and it was her responsibility to reach out, no matter what. She asked Marcella what her husband did.

  Marcella had been gazing out the window, too, but now she roused herself and turned back, pushing one hand through her dark curls. There was a fine line of sweat beading on her forehead. Even with the fan on high, the afternoon was very hot. “He’s an ecologist,” she said. “Soil conservation. We were in Indonesia for two years, and now he’s working as a consultant for the new dam here. I’m a teacher,” she added. “English. Though they’ve only hired me part-time.”

  “Well, that’s something new,” Joyce said, interested, for all the other women that she knew were wives of executives at the factory. “I once considered teaching. It doesn’t pay much, though, as I recall.”

  Marcella put her tea down. “No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “But I’ve met so many people. And last week, for the first time, another teacher invited me to her family home. She grew up in a village about half a day’s drive from here. We sat on reed mats on the floor and ate with our hands, the way they do here, you know. There was tea, and these wonderful cakes made from coconut milk, cool and very smooth, like white jelly.” Marcella smiled then, and stopped herself. “Of course,” she added, “you’d know all about that.” She laughed. “I’m sorry. After thirty years, this must seem very ordinary to you.”

  Joyce smiled, sipping her tea, but she was surprised, thinking of Jamal’s rickety wooden house, or the modest bungalows of the lower managers at the factory. Places where, even in the depths of her great loneliness, she had never thought to go.

  “You’ve certainly seen a lot,” Joyce said. She paused, struggling against an uneasiness—an unfamiliar envy, even, that Marcella Frank’s exuberant immersion into the local life had inspired. “Of course,” she went on, “it takes quite a lot of time to really be accepted here. Why, it wasn’t until just last year that I knew I finally had been. I received an invitation to the palace then, for the sultan’s birthday. I’d often seen him, of course, and we’d met once or twice at the minister’s house, but to be invited to his birthday celebration—well, it was really such an honor.” She laughed lightly. “I was in a dilemma for weeks about what I ought to wear.”

  “And what did you decide?” Marcella asked. She had looked up, truly interested at last. Joyce allowed herself a moment of satisfaction before she answered, remembering the silence that had welled up around her when she entered the palace, her silk dress glowing like a shaft of golden light.

  “I found a lovely piece of cloth in Singapore. Gold silk. And there’s a rather wonderful tailor here in town. I had some illustrations of course, from magazines, to show him the sort of thing I wanted, and he created it from there.”

  “Gold, did you say?” Marcella asked.

  “Yes,” Joyce said. She smiled, thinking of the dress, like a patch of opaque sunlight. “It was a lovely shade,” she added.

  “Gold?” Marcella insisted. “And that was all right?”

  “It was lovely,” Joyce said sharply, frowning now.

  “No, no,” Marcella
said. She was leaning forward, quite intent. “That isn’t what I mean. I’m sure it was beautiful. What I meant was, no one said anything about the color?”

  “My dear girl, why should they?” Joyce asked. “There were women there in every color you can imagine.”

  “But gold,” Marcella said slowly. “I was told that gold is the sultan’s color. That no one else is allowed to wear it in his presence.”

  “Oh, that,” Joyce said. She laughed and waved her hand in the air, but at the same time she felt a sudden horror ripple like a blush along her skin. She remembered the hush that had filled the room when she walked in, a stillness so complete that she’d heard only her own breathing, only the tap of her heels against the marble. It was true—the faces around her had seemed to freeze, mid-sentence, as she walked the length of the hall. She had taken it for a hush of admiration, but what if this girl, this Marcella Frank, was right? It was simply too horrible to consider. Joyce, after an instant of pure dismay, shook the thought away. The sultan, after all, had received her very graciously.

  “Surely,” she said, her voice a little strained even to her own ears, “surely they wouldn’t expect a foreigner to follow these same customs. Why of course not,” she went on, drawing assurance from her own argument. “Of course they wouldn’t. I’ve been here almost thirty years and if they did, I most certainly would have heard about it.”

  “I could be mistaken,” Marcella, seeing her distress, said hastily. “I’m sure I must be. It was the other teachers who mentioned it to me. They didn’t want me to commit any social errors.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Joyce said, relieved. The locals had a thousand superstitions—about spirits and thieves, dangerous times of day. Even Jamal refused to do any work at dusk, because he claimed it was the hour when spirits roamed most freely. Joyce didn’t suppose she should give any more credence to the rumor about gold dresses than she gave to the other nonsense. “Everyone always comes here with the same idea. They’ve read too many novels from the Raj. It was literally years before I received my invitation. In fact, you mustn’t be disappointed if you never get one. You wouldn’t be the first.”