by Yeoh Jo-Ann
An epitaph in the second person, addressed to the dead—the man has never known one like this. His heart quickens.
“We saw a grave slab with an inscription like this at the ancient cemetery in Athens when we were there, years ago.” Her voice is soft now; he has to lean closer to hear her. “She cried and cried over it.” She pauses. “So did I.”
XIII
CHRISTMAS DINNER SHOULD be special, they all agree.
Sukhin wants to say something about European paganism, harvest festivals, cultural and religious colonialism and the inappropriateness, therefore, of celebrating Christmas in the Southeast Asian region. But for her sake he keeps quiet.
Jinn spends less time at the kitchen on Rowell Road these days. There are more volunteers now, including a retired chef who used to run a thirty-man kitchen in a big-name Teochew restaurant, and she feels it’s time for her to retire into the shadows and let the new people have a go at things. But Kim Seng has insisted on her helping him organise the Christmas dinner—it will be their grandest effort yet, with a fleet of volunteers ferrying people from other parts of the island to the Rowell site.
The families at East Coast Park will be coming too, Jinn told him the week before. She seemed delighted. “Sukhin, how kind,” she had said, when he asked Kim Seng and Gopal about the possibility of getting food to the people he’d seen living on the beach. He’d done nothing but take down a name and a number and pass them on, but if Sukhin had a tail, he would have wagged it.
“Healthy food, for Christmas? Hmm. Well, turkey is healthy, right?”
He’s agreed to be the meeting scribe, but so far he’s written nothing down. Nothing intelligent or actionable—how he hates the word, but it’s at least useful—has been said in the last hour and he suspects nothing will be.
“Is turkey too Christian?”
Sukhin blows out his cheeks and sighs loudly. Too much, too much.
Every head turns towards him. A long, even stare from Jinn.
He raises his hand in apology. “Sorry, sorry. Please, carry on.”
“Turkey is Christian?” Gopal sounds incredulous. “And, um, it’s Christmas.” Sukhin cheers him on—in his head.
The veggie pirates are meant to be making a list of everything they will need for Christmas dinner—food, lights, candles, more tables, everything— but the discussion hasn’t progressed beyond what they should serve.
“Can we have curry?”
“What about turkey curry?”
“Is turkey curry like chicken curry but with turkey?”
“No curry! Curry isn’t Christmassy!”
Sukhin wants to strangle them all.
At the head of the table, next to Kim Seng, Jinn lifts a hand and waits for everyone to stop speaking. “We’re going to make a list of everything everyone wants. And then we’ll vote, and that will decide the menu. Is that okay?”
A murmur, then everyone nods. Relieved, Sukhin organises the Christmas election. When the meeting ends an hour later, there are fourteen items on the dinner menu—turkey is in, and so is fish biryani, roast chicken, mutton rendang, mushroom rice, devil curry, strawberries, kuih dadar, gingerbread, durian pengat, bread pudding, fruit tarts, mince pie and “festive cakes”, which no one can define but everyone agrees are necessary.
Kim Seng laughs. “Wah. So rojak.” He looks at Jinn. “Okay lah, let’s try.”
As people start to leave and Gopal accosts Jinn for a tête-à-tête to say something derisive about the new volunteer who brought up the Christianness of turkey, Sukhin goes up to Kim Seng.
“What’s the plan?”
“Don’t know, honestly.” Big, long sigh. “Quite a lot of things to do if we want to get this right. But I don’t want to tell them that this is all a little too much, you know? This sort of thing—we have to dare to try lah.” He consults his notes. “And food is just part of it, you know—so many other things to take care of.”
Sukhin wonders what Kim Seng does when he’s not captain of the veggie pirates. Teach? Sell stuff? Manage a gang of criminals? (What’s the verb for gangster?) He’s articulate, organised, logical and comes across as intelligent without seeming like a know-it-all. People listen to him. Even when he’s dressed in tired-looking shorts and a faded football jersey that’s too tight for him. What a superpower—and he’s using it to organise groups of people who scavenge for vegetables and cook them for other people. Sukhin is unsure whether to think of Kim Seng as a madman or a saint, but he’s leaning towards madman—sainthood proper would require being burnt at the stake or crushed by a wheel or something just as gruesome.
“A lot of cake and pastry on the list.”
Kim Seng shakes his head. “Yah. That’s going to be hard—we’ve only got that one oven. Time to start looking for sponsors. But Christmas is so busy—it’s going to be so hard.” He raises a hand to his forehead. “Two hundred people! Last year, I don’t think we even had half of that.”
Sukhin takes the plunge. “I know someone who may be able to help.”
“So, can I put you down for cake? For the big dinner.”
They’re finally leaving Rowell, after an extended discussion about the Christmas set-up and timings with Kim Seng and Gopal. Who knew there could be so many ways to arrange tables and chairs in a back alley?
“Sure. What kind?”
“Surprise me—something special.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“Kim Seng told me you’ve offered to help with getting sponsors.”
“Nothing’s confirmed. But I’ll make a few calls.”
She puts a hand on his shoulder and sighs. “Thanks, Sukhin. We need all the help we can get.”
He starts the car. “School holidays. Might as well keep busy.”
The one thing that Sukhin and his father will agree on absolutely is what a wonderful thing it is that Christmas isn’t a big deal in the Dhillon household. No parties, no traditions, no gifts, no feasting. If anything, things slow down in December. Sukhin becomes idle and increasingly moody from a combination of being idle and dreading the start of the new school year. Dr Jaswant takes time off from the surgery because all his patients are on vacation, and every year he and Doris say that next year they too will go on vacation.
“Paris. We should go to Paris.”
“Paris? Why Paris? Alaska! We could book a cruise. Sukhin, what do you think?”
Sukhin doesn’t look up from the laptop he’s helping his father reformat. “Sounds brilliant.”
“You should come with us.”
Doris sets down her coffee mug. “Yes! A family vacation.” She turns to Sukhin, whose full attention she’s managed to get with her last two words. “Where would you like to go?”
Home. Time to leave. There is no way he’s getting dragged into any discussion of a family vacation, no matter how remote the possibility—if he does, he won’t be able to deny knowledge of it later.
But first: “Is it okay if I take a few more boxes?”
His father frowns. “Your friend—she needs more boxes?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
Doris, sensing an impending impasse, decides to go all in. This is serious, she thinks. There really might be grandchildren in this. This woman’s house-moving has taken months, and yet her son, her impatient, antisocial Sukhin, is still helping out. Last week, he asked her for a recipe for Christmas pudding—and wanted to know if there was one that required flambéing. Flambéing! He said he wanted something special. The boxes, all the interest in baking and cooking and flambéing—when has he ever been like this before? Not even his old girlfriend had inspired him to cook, and he really, really liked that girl.
“Take all the boxes you need, Sukhin.”
“Really?” He expects a little more resistance.
As if on cue, his father chimes in. “Darling, if we need to move…” The one-track mind, boys and girls, is the secret to a successful medical career.
Sukhin makes a dash for the living ro
om and Doris turns to her husband. “Jas, it’s fine. We have plenty to spare.”
She will make dried chilli chicken with cashews, his favourite, for dinner. And sugee cookies. He will forgive her.
In the living room, in a Sukhin-sized space between two stacks of boxes, Sukhin is feeling very kindly towards his mother as he carefully searches for the sizes he needs. Perhaps a very short family vacation…
He picks up a promising-looking box and studies it. No. Not sturdy enough.
This year, Sukhin hasn’t had the time to become idle and moody.
His living room is a scrap heap now; his study is half-full of boxes. Three weeks on, the project has nearly swallowed him whole. He spends every waking hour with it or thinking about it, except when he goes to see Jinn or his parents. Or when he bakes—on his fourth attempt, the Christmas pudding turned out very well. Adding fresh cherries made all the difference, exactly as his mother said it would. He has ordered a kitchen blowtorch— the one he borrowed from Dennis only has three settings for flame intensity and no option for changing flame diameter.
The project, sadly, isn’t going as well as the baking. Version Three now, and the sketches alone have taken three days. The first version didn’t work at all—his direct translation from memory of wood to cardboard wasn’t structurally sound or elegant, and the mechanism was far too clumsy. Straight to the recycling heap—he didn’t even need to test it to know it was going to be a waste of time. The second took twice as long to build and looked nothing like the first or the long-dead original. It was modular—good; light—good; but there were too many oddly shaped pieces and he wasn’t happy with the structure. But the mechanism worked, earning Two the right to remain in the living room, the lesser but acknowledged elder brother to Three.
He checks the time. 2pm. No time for lunch—he’s meeting her in an hour.
As he puts his tools back into their box, Three stares up at him, needy and petulant. Get your ass back here. These slats won’t make themselves.
Sukhin shakes his head. Internal conversations with inanimate objects now? Ah, mental decline—I’ve been expecting you.
Who the hell is that man?
Ten minutes ago, he found Jinn. She’s under an origami-esque pavilion halfway through the park. Her backpack is next to her on the long wooden seat; the stranger is on the other side. The man is plainly dressed—outdoor clothes and sensible shoes—and doesn’t appear in any way threatening— except that he’s speaking to Jinn and leaning towards her in a way that disturbs Sukhin.
Who parks himself under an identical pavilion a short distance away, watching, waiting for the man to leave. Willing him to leave. He wants to go up to Jinn and say something to her and at the stranger, something that will send an unambiguous message to him that he’s not wanted here. “There you are. Is this weirdo bothering you?”
Is he?
Jinn isn’t getting up to leave. She isn’t saying much, but that doesn’t say much. The man is turned towards her as he speaks, his gestures small but friendly. She is looking ahead, at the river. But she isn’t getting up to leave, and she hasn’t noticed Sukhin’s arrival.
Who the hell is this man?
Half an hour goes by. Finally, the stranger gets up. He smiles at Jinn and does an odd little bow. Obsequious fuck. Sukhin stares hard, taking advantage of the unobstructed view of his face. No, he’s never seen him before. Then again, maybe he just doesn’t remember—there’s nothing striking about the stranger. Tallish, medium built, no obvious physical deformities. Handsome? Sukhin doesn’t know. Maybe—would Dennis call those good legs?
The stranger passes Sukhin as he leaves. Quick step, good posture, steady gaze. Taller than Sukhin first assumed. Better looking up close—tanned, lean and square-jawed in that annoying wholesome way that all the boys in the swim team had. He doesn’t notice Sukhin glowering under the other pavilion.
Jinn doesn’t turn to watch the stranger leave, but she looks up at Sukhin as he sits down beside her. He’s already decided that he won’t ask about the stranger like a loud, loutish lover.
“You smell like cookies.”
Uncanny. “You hound.”
“Arf.”
“Dogs can’t eat chocolate.”
“Do I look like any old dog? I was bred for chocolate-scoffing.” She holds out a hand.
He produces a tin, holding it just out of her reach. “If you keel over and die, I’ll leave you here.”
“But take the bicycle—key’s in my backpack. Now, hand over the cookies.”
They share the cookies, which Jinn pronounces too sweet but delicious, and then they go for a walk. She tells him that she cycled to Changi Beach again, and that she saw the otters on her way there.
“Isn’t it wonderful how otters just…are? Without thinking about it? No delusions of grandeur or insecurities or anything stupid. Imagine being an otter.”
“If I were an otter, I think I could manage delusions of grandeur.”
“A snooty otter.” She rolls her eyes.
“I’d be adorable.”
They discuss, at length, what makes an adorable otter adorable. Jinn decides an otter is adorable by virtue of being an otter, snootiness notwithstanding. She tells him that this means his snootiness, were he an otter, would add no value to the otterdom.
She doesn’t tell him about the handsomish stranger.
Three isn’t behaving. It’s four in the morning and, after hours of tweaks and adjustments, the mechanism still isn’t working as it should—the movements are too rigid and regular; the effect is crude.
He will need to find a way to randomise the movements. He must introduce imperfection.
The baking continues to go well. Sukhin is so pleased with the fifth iteration of the Christmas pudding that he drives it over to Dennis’ place for an impromptu supper.
“Sweetie, what is that?”
Sukhin realises he’s enjoying the horror on Dennis’ face. “My new kitchen blowtorch.”
He begins to put it together on Dennis’ kitchen counter, screwing the torch head with its petrol-pump-like nozzle onto the gas cylinder. The assembled torch looks like a gun attached to a large can of insect spray. He turns it on and a jet of blue flame bursts from the nozzle.
“No. Mine is a blowtorch. That is an industrial welding tool.”
“It’s all-purpose. The reviews are great.” In one of the hundreds of reviews he read, someone noted excitedly that “it sears meat like a dragon”. That clinched it for Sukhin.
He tells Dennis to switch off the lights. And then, dragon-like, he begins to sear the snowy meringue peaks he’s just piled on top of the Christmas pudding. Dennis doesn’t say a word, watching mutely as Sukhin pours cherry brandy over the entire pudding and lights it up.
“Behold—the Christmas bomb.”
Blue tongues of flame dance over the pudding, luminous in the darkness. The meringue peaks, carefully serrated with a fork just minutes ago, glow like little razor blades. It’s like an alien egg. Sukhin smiles to himself. He can’t wait to see Jinn’s face when she sees this.
When the flames die down, he cuts a slice for Dennis and one for himself.
“Not sure about the name, but very fancy—and very good.” Dennis takes another mouthful and sighs loudly. “So. This is for her somehow, isn’t it?”
“It’s for—a party.” Sukhin shrugs. “It’s a pudding, Dennis. Just flour and eggs and sugar and fruit. It’s not a big deal.”
“You bought a blowtorch. It’s a big deal.”
Dennis puts the rest of the Christmas bomb into the freezer. He has no idea what he’ll do with the massive ball of carbs, but it will keep.
He resumes his seat at the table and leans forward until his face is nearly touching Sukhin’s. “Tell me something—are you guys actually dating? Or are you hovering around, silent and hopeful? One day she’ll notice me and that kind of thing?” He stares at Sukhin, eyes wide. “Oh god, sweetie, that’s it, isn’t it?”
Sukhin doesn�
��t answer. Why are people so keen on the minutiae of other people’s love lives? Why not pester for details on the books they’re reading or their sleeping hours? He would love to have someone ask him about his sleeping hours—he’s surviving on just over four hours a night these days and is a little surprised to find he’s still functioning. It would be nice to discuss this with someone, perhaps get some perspective on whether he should push this further just to see what happens.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“You know, you’re a little too old for this to be cute. Can’t you just tell her?” Dennis flings up his hands. “Just tell her!”
But there’s nothing to tell. The summary of them is too ludicrous to say out loud, to anyone. My ex-girlfriend now lives in a park. We meet twice a week. It’s nice. There’s nothing to tell.
“We’re not talking about this.”
“God, so stubborn. Sweets, I know you’re a lit teacher, but there’s really no need to do the suffering unrequited love thing.”
“Suffering unrequited love thing—you put it so well.”
“And you’re hopeless.” Dennis eyes the blowtorch, now prostrate on the kitchen table, and raises an eyebrow. “You bring that to her party—she’ll definitely pay attention.”
“Shut up, Dennis.”
There he is again.
In the distance, on an elevated portion of the main boardwalk, Jinn and the stranger are walking and talking. He’s doing most of the talking, but she appears to be listening. Every now and then, she nods. Her face is calm. The stranger is an eager dog, lively and energetic and silly-looking. He moves around her as he speaks, his gestures dramatic. Today, he is dressed differently—just a shirt and jeans, but very neat. He carries a bright yellow box in one hand.
Is that chocolate? Sukhin grinds his teeth. Furthermore, what is this man doing here in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon? He doesn’t look like any sort of wandering vagabond or wandering anything—that shirt looks ironed—so doesn’t he have to work?