Gweimui Storiesa work in progress

It was 1899. There was big ship. And a long journey. Months and months at
sea. The water changed from grey to blue to shocking jade as they descended
latitudes. She had never seen anything like it. Each morning was a new world
upon the deck. Rounding the Cape, there were sharks snapping in the surf. Off
the coast of India, you could almost smell the spices. She was just a girl, really.
Heading across the world to join her father after her mothers death. When the
ship docked, amid the noise of a dozen languages and the bustle of cargo and
coolies, he was waiting for her, with three servants and a carriage. He
embraced her, almost crushing her, his silent tears falling invisibly into her hair.
She was carried off through the hot streets, strange sights and scents whipping
through the window.

Their house on the Peak was too large for two people. A woman in black
pajamas moved silently through the house, surprising the girl in stairways and
sitting rooms. The woman could only speak a little English, but that was OK.
The girl didnt have much to say in her new life. She mainly spent her days
reading in the study with the big windows, listening to the odd birds and
occasional monkeys. In the evening, she would dine with her father, and try to
avoid his pleas for her to join the other women at the club. Some days she
gave in, and took tea with the bitter and gossiping wives of officers and
Taipans, managing a weak smile in their midst. She knew they probably
gossiped about her too, once she was gone.

She would come home thankful for the silence of the empty rooms, her books,
the huge dark trees through the pebbled glass. She wondered about her
friends in London, but they seemed so far away nowwere they even still real,
she wondered? And was she, in this half-life in a strange land, just as much a
ghost to them as they were now to her?

One day she took up an offer to pay a call at the house where a distant
relatives son was visiting, down closer to the harbor where few Westerners
lived. Through the windows of her carriage, she saw the small, cramped
tenement houses her father had forbid her to walk among. She also saw
something strangea white shape being taken out of a doorway, a man
burning incense and sweeping it around the figure. A family wailing beside. It
took her only a moment to realize that someone had just died. The carriage
suddenly stopped, as loud, crashing music filled the street. A funeral procession
passed by her window, with a powerful sweet smell from the joss sticks. She
looked as the white shape passed directly beyond the glass. She was too
fascinated to look away.

In the green and peaceful garden where her distant cousin was staying, they
drank tea and chatted about others they knew. Gradually the girl became
tired, and politely took her leave. The carriage on the way back to the Peak
Tram was bumpier than usual. She fanned herself in futility. Back at the house,
she began to feel that nothing was quite real. She went into the study that she
loved so, and stood beside the tall window. She looked out at the trees,
infinitely green, infinitely deep. A small white bird appeared, then
disappeared, in the shadows. The heat was too much. She began to unbutton
her high-collared blouse. Then her skirt. Then the bootsthe hooks gave her

some trouble. Finally she was naked in front of the glass. She was a bit cooler
now.

The maid found her a little while later, collapsed beneath the window naked.
The girl was like fire to the touch, her white skin covered in sweat. The woman
knew what the girl did not, and what her father had just learned at the his firm
todaythe plague had returned to the city . The maid covered her own face
with a handkerchief and bundled the girl into bed. Then called for the doctor.
A few days later the fever was gone, but so was the girl who had once stared
through the tall glass window and wanted to melt into the green trees of this
island.

That once-stately house was torn down a few years ago, to make way for new
luxury serviced apartments. But up until its demolition, though the glass was
broken and the library book-cases mildewed to dust, they say on some silent
afternoons you could see, for just a flashing second, the white shape of a girl,
stripped bare beyond the window.

Gweimui Stories 001

Samantha Culp 2007