Midnight in the Garden of Good, and not so Evil

From above, Savannah is capped by a canopy of the distinctive Spanish Moss, which drapes over its rooftops and fills the skyline of the city’s historic district. From below, the moss is eerily mesmerising, waving its branches in the wind like ghostly green figures, softly smudging any light that punctures its enclaves. Savannah of Georgia is said to be one of the prettiest cities in America, and was the setting of the New York Times Best Seller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, a novel based on real events that took place in Savannah’s high society in the 80s and 90s, depicting murder, prostitution and above all, the eccentricities of this once inward-looking place. If I’m honest, I was drawn to Savannah for three simple reasons. Firstly, what Savannahians refer to simply as “the book”. Although I had only read one chapter, the cover picture of a bird-girl statue in a cemetery gripped my curiosity. Secondly, I’d read in STA Travel that Savannah was “the most haunted city in America”, and thirdly, it looked very pretty indeed on Google Images. My decision to visit was firmly cemented.

With these notions, I travelled to Savannah. Unlike the millions of tourists who arrive comfortably and stay in one of the opulent B&Bs in the historic district, with a sweet heap-load of legendary southern hospitality projected upon them, I came to Savannah on the Greyhound bus. My dwelling was a pensione on the edge of the historic district, and within minutes of walking through the front door, the owner of the pensione told me, “In America, we have guns, and in Savannah, the murder rate is high”. This was of course courteously followed by “I’m not trying to scare you young lady”. What was scaring me wasn’t the thought of destitute criminals roaming the streets below, but this peculiar man sitting opposite me. Tired and weathered in appearance, he spoke in a disengaged manner, and often mumbled and looked at the wall behind me as if I were somehow part of the wallpaper. This led to a momentarily surreal setting where I questioned whether I was physically in the room, and felt an acute urge to lean forward and wave my hands in his face. I managed to restrain from doing so, but perhaps if I had, I might have discovered that I was in the presence of a ghost, live and kicking in accordance with STA’s “Most Haunted Cities in America”.

The Creek

“Up you get little girl. Sit tight and hold onto this metal handle in front of you”. Being deposited onto a stranger at the age of five and being hauled onto Mongolian horseback was the beginning of what I can clearly pinpoint as one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my childhood. “Wait for us by the water!” my mother yelled as the horseman and I galloped away towards the edge of the grassland. Thud, thud, thud, became the rhythm in my ear as I was bounced against the saddle like a rubber ball, by undulating motions and the heavy hands of gravity. A single thread of thought ran through my mind, attempting to suppress the jostling contingent of pain vying for my attention: “Is the horseman not being inflicted by the same pain?”.  At some point along this bumpy ride, I caught sight of a gleaming rim in the distance, which gradually inflated into a watery depth as the creek slowly came into view. Some half an hour later, after the rest of my family had caught up with my solitary figure on the side of the creek, I leant out of the fisherman’s wooden boat to run my hands through the clear waters, as we paddled up the creek.

“We’re almost there!” I yelled as we cycled along the sun-baked-dry dirt track of the countryside. I was back here, in the rural outskirts of Beijing where I spent my childhood, an area that has undergone transformation beyond recognition. Long gone were the woodlands and meadows, which had paved the way to the Great Wall of China, once visible from my bedroom window like a mirage. In its place was smoke spewing factories and chimneys, obliterating any sign of the history and legacy that surround the small town of Kang Zhuang. I had promised a friend a visit to Emperor Kangxi’s former illustrious equestrian playground, Kangxi Grasslands; its rich and fertile terrain, together with the area’s milder summer temperatures, was a thirst quenching escape from the stifling enclosures of the Forbidden City. As we approached, what I recalled as being a bustling arena where horses and their enchanted riders reigned the land, was instead a vacant space with grass the shade of a lack-lustre green.

I was there to ride the majestic horses from Mongolia, which I had remembered as being wild and unruly like the landscape of their homeland; but instead, I was handed a dishevelled and languid looking mare. “We got rid of the Mongolian breed a while back,” the owner said, “they were too dangerous and caused many accidents which we couldn’t afford to pay for. These horses are docile and won’t cause problems for you”. This was a considerable damper on my carefully cultivated vision of racing through the grassland with nothing to hold me back. “We were thinking of riding up to the creek,” I said. “The creek? There is not much of that left; they’ve re-irrigated the water to feed the grass as the summers are becoming drier each year. You might be able to see remnants of it from afar though”.

We decided to try to reach the creek anyway, and the horseman led us out to what felt like an infinite stretch of grass with no end in sight, and let the horse free for us to ride. I was able to steer the horse well enough to amble along at a slow speed, but after a little while I became confident enough to trot. The overwhelming sense of freedom of being in a vast open space gave me a sudden burst of energy and at some point, I began to gallop, until it became obvious that something was holding me back. “The mare is pregnant!” the horseman spurted out breathlessly as he ran to catch up with me. I grimaced at how my equestrian ambitions had clearly moved beyond ethically sound conduct in this case and was verging on maltreatment. Reverting back to ambling along at a sensible pace, I focused my attention back on the skyline, eager to spot a glistening surface as we headed further afield

“The creek is still far away and there’s not much of it to see, the past week has been very dry”. The horseman said, “The horses are tired and we need to start heading back. I suggest you come back next year once this area has been rejuvenated by Olympic investment”. I knew that it would be much longer than that before I would return again. “OK”, I nodded, scanning the distant horizon, as I turned to go back.