“The Musical Tree” was just published in French, on editions GOPE website. Editions GOPE is my French publisher for Trois Autres Malaisie, the French translation of Lovers and Strangers Revisited. They are doing a series of short pieces by their authors on Southeast Asia, their specialty.
“The Musical Tree” is an excerpt from my short story, “Following
the Cat” which was published in Thema
in the USA and Off the Edge in Malaysia, which itself is an excerpt from my
Penang novel, A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit,
a finalist in the 2017 and 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards.
Here is the English version of “The Musical Tree”:
We
stopped at a shady area serviced by several hawker stalls and drank from
coconuts. A dozen cats lay around in idle repose while waiting for their next
meal. A white cat climbed onto a chair
vacated by two Malays and put its paws on the table to survey the leftovers. A mewing gray kitten waiting below asked it
to hurry up.
A
strange looking tree caught my attention.
Then I realized it wasn’t a tree, but a composite of two trees. The one on the inside was old with a dark
knotted trunk, while wrapped around it was a younger tree with light, smooth
bark. The upper branches of the two
trees were so intertwined it was difficult to distinguish one from the
other.
I
pointed it out to Jeya, who was eleven years old and had befriended me. I asked her about it.
“Oh
that. That is a musical tree,” replied
Jeya.
“A
what?”
“A
musical tree.” She finished her coconut
and said, “Come!”
She
led me to the tree and asked me to sit on the seawall beneath it.
“Now
listen.” She cupped her ear. “Hear it?”
Dozens,
if not hundreds, of birds were singing all at once, a symphony in full
swing. I closed my eyes as I listened to
the magic.
“You
can hear them, but you cannot see them, am I right or not?”
The foliage was so dark and
dense, it was impossible to see anything.
“It
must drive all the cats crazy,” I said.
“Cats
are crazy,” replied Jeya, and laughed.
“Every day the musical tree comes alive.
Every day a free concert.”
Two
of Jeya’s classmates waved as they passed by.
She scampered off to join them.
Already
I was missing Jeya’s company….The longer I sat under the tree listening to the birds,
the lonelier I became….A young Malay couple walked by holding hands. The boy said something to the girl and she
boxed him on the arm. He grabbed his arm
and feigned pain. Both of them
laughed. She hit him again. They were young and in love, just starting
out in life. In comparison, I felt old—not
yet thirty but already facing divorce.
A
Chinese derelict reeking of alcohol and urine sauntered over, uninvited. He sat down beside me and eyed the driftwood
between us. I tried to ignore him, expecting
the derelict to hit me up for money.
Why were children so giving, and adults, demanding?
“You
like the birdies?” He pointed up at the
tree. “The birdies sing for themselves,
you know. They sing ‘cause it makes them
happy. If only people could sing without
needing someone to hear them they might be happy, too.”
A
black cat stirred. It paused in
mid-stretch to look at me. The cat began
to walk away. Again it paused as if to
see if I were coming. I excused myself
from the derelict and followed the cat.
It seemed to know where it was going.
For now that was good enough for me.
#
# #
Here's a link to the
intro and excerpts, and to four reviews of Trois Autres Malaisie in
eurasie.net, Malaisie.org,
easyvoyage.com,
and Petit
Futé mag.
Here’s also a link to my Maugham and Me series (in English)
that I wrote when asked to take part in a French documentary on Somerset Maugham
which was recently aired on the Franco-German cultural channel Arte on 5 June 2017
and still can be viewed here for another week or so before Arte takes it down from their website...
—Borneo
Expat Writer
