The Harmony Silk Factory

On the way home I asked him if I could go swimming again. I was twelve, I think, and I wanted to go to the islands around Pangkor, where I had heard the sun made the sand look like tiny crystals. I longed to see for myself the Seven Maidens, those islands that legend held disappeared with the setting sun; I yearned for their hot waters. But Father said he wouldn’t take me.

“Those places no longer exist,” he said. “They are part of a story, a useless old story.”

“Why can’t we go just for a day?” I ventured. “Have you ever seen them, Father?”

“I told you, I hate islands.”

“Why?”

“Actually I don’t like the sea much,” he said simply.

I knew better than to test him when he was in one of these moods. I noticed, however, that even though I had just spent the afternoon in the sun, my skin was white compared to his. It refused to turn dark, remaining pale and unblemished, a clean sheet beside his dirty sun-mottled arms.

No one ever stops to visit the Valley. Buses hurry past on their journey north to Penang, pausing briefly for refreshments in Parit or Taiping. Their passengers sit for ten minutes at zinc-covered roadside truck stops, sipping at bottles of Fanta and nibbling on savoury chicken-flavoured biscuits, and then they are away again, eager to leave the dull central plains of the Valley for the neon lights and seaside promenades of Georgetown. When I was young it was possible to spend a week in Ipoh without hearing a single word of English. No one had a TV in those days (apart from us, of course). Then, as now, Western visitors were rare. The only white people I ever saw were the ones who had to be in the Valley — alcoholic planters and unhappy civil servants.

Only once do I remember seeing a tourist, and even then I was not certain he had come to the Valley by design. I was indulging in a favourite childhood pastime, climbing into the lower reaches of the giant banyan tree that dominated the riverbank near the factory. I reached for the thick hanging vines and swung in a broad arc, rising high until I faced the giddying sky; and then I let myself go, tilting and falling into the warm water. When I surfaced I saw an Englishman sitting on the bank, his folded arms resting on his raised knees. A canvas satchel hung limply across his shoulders. The other children who were with me ceased to play; they splashed quietly in the shallows, nervously hiding their nakedness in the opaque water. I wanted to climb the tree and dive into the river again, but the Englishman was sitting at the base of the trunk, perched uncomfortably on the lumpy roots. It did not occur to me to be afraid; I simply walked up the slippery bank towards the tree, passing very close to him. I noticed that he was not looking at me, but staring blankly into the distance. He was not an old man, but his face was just like my father’s, scarred by a weariness I had rarely seen in other men. He looked lost; I am sure he had wandered into the Valley by mistake. I climbed swiftly up into the branches and crawled out to the end of a large bough, and as I fell forward into the water I caught a glimpse of the man’s thick silvered hair. When I surfaced from the water he had gone, and the other children were singing and shouting again. The white man was a spy, we agreed, laughing, or a madman. Or perhaps, said Orson Lai, he was a ghost who had returned to haunt the scene of some terrible crime. Yes, we decided, our voices hushed with childish fear, he had to be a ghost. No one ever visits the Valley.

Nowadays there is even less traffic through the small towns of the Kinta. The new North-South Highway allows a traveller to speed past the Valley in less than three hours. The journey is soothing, untroubled. You fall asleep in air-conditioned comfort, and in truth you do not miss very much. Between the hills and the invisible sea, the landscape is flat and unremarkable. Nothing catches your eye except for the many disused tin mines, now filled with rainwater. You see them everywhere in the Valley, quiet, gloomy pools of black water. I used to search for the largest ones, the ones so big I could pretend they were the ocean itself. But this pretence rarely worked. Once I stepped off the tepid, muddy shelf which ringed the pool, I was in water of untold depth, water which now covered the work of my ancestors. The temperature plunged. Every year boys from my town drowned in such pools. The shock of the cold made their muscles seize up. This was how my friend Ruby Wong died. He was my only friend from my childhood and he was a good swimmer, one of the best. Although not nearly as strong as me and slight in build, he had a smooth, easy stroke which barely broke the water yet propelled him steadily at considerable speeds. He could swim without coming to shore for an hour at a time. Once we swam across the swirling brown waters of the Perak, Ruby leading the way. We were not even out of breath when we reached the other bank.