by Lu Huiyi
So there was no need to chafe under the unceasing violence of external forces, as Mother did, or to grouse and pray for improbable escapes, the way Father did. Beng had his own shrines and his own beliefs, and they suggested to him a gentler mode of living.
In retrospect, this belief was the premise from which everything began.
There was a commotion at the City Hall Train Station one morning. Most of the family had left the slums by that time of the day—Mother and Huat to work, Grandfather off on one of his long walks, and Father to scavenge in nearby neighbourhoods. Beng was the only one at home when the Gahmen officials came to marshal a captive audience to the scene.
Beng had heard about these displays that the Gahmen was fond of putting up, and the whispers and meaningful glances that he caught suggested that this particular show was going to be a rather ugly one. It wasn’t something he fancied seeing at all, but ever since he had been made acutely aware of the implant in his arm, he had made it a point to be inconspicuous and compliant in the face of Gahmen lackeys. Resigned, he allowed himself to be jostled and bossed all the way to the open square in front of the train station, where a crowd had formed around the scene of a weeping man.
Beng blinked—he recognised the man. It was the manager from the pottery factory, the one he had tried to stop from laying hands on the hapless girl. It was the manager he had been fired for standing up to. The officials flanking him had manhandled him into a sitting position and clapped shackles onto his hands and feet. He looked nowhere as confident and powerful as he had in the factory that day; his face was blotchy from crying, he was struggling in vain, and he was issuing a litany of broken pleas and apologies to nobody in particular.
The crowd shuffled, a little uneasy at such a scene.
“The Gahmen State protects the vulnerable,” one of the officials declared empathetically, his voice rising above the cries of the manager. “This man was a powerful employee in the pottery factory on Waterloo Road, and he abused his power to molest and assault young women working in his factory. He exploited the power that the factory gave him, and the Gahmen holds that he should be punished fittingly.”
The atmosphere was shifting; Beng could feel it. Public punishment was always an ugly spectacle, but public punishment for such a criminal was an ugly spectacle that was easier to live with. The crowd applauded, as was expected of them, and a ripple of anticipation went through all of them.
A great vessel was set down in front of them. There was slight confusion for a while before the officials plunged their hands in and dug out handfuls of soft, wet clay—the very same soft clay Beng had seen used in the pottery factory. A shocked, barely-suppressed murmur started as the officials, without further ceremony, began to coat the manager’s face in the rapidly hardening stuff. The manager squirmed and tried to scream, but choked instead as his nostrils and mouth were plugged with clay. An official pried open the manager’s eyelids while another official smoothed clay over his twitching eyeballs. They were meticulous, even filling his ears up with the viscous substance.
In a very short period of time, none of the manager’s facial features were visible anymore. The officials had shrouded his entire head in a thick layer of clay, that was slowly beginning to dry in the hot sun. The manager had stopped moving early into the punishment.
The same official who had spoken at the start stepped forward again. His hands were now smeared with streaks of clay.
“The Gahmen is fair, but also merciful,” he said. “We have left him with a method to prove his innocence. The accused will sit here for seven days. At the end of the week, the clay will be removed, and should he be alive, then he must have been innocent, and will be compensated and spared. The Gahmen protects the vulnerable; the Gahmen stands on the side of the right.”
Everyone knew better than to contradict him, so they all stood in silence. But the official must have caught a few glances that bordered on the mulish or the incredulous, because he suddenly bristled.
“What?” he snapped. “He touched girls who couldn’t fight back. Also, clay is porous, isn’t it? If he deserves to breathe, then enough air will get through to save him. Go home now, and let this be a lesson to all of you.”
“Everyone wants something,” Beng said.
“What do you want?” asked Huat.
Beng thought it over. “To go back to school,” he said. “A bed, a room of my own, and while I’m dreaming, an actual flushing toilet.”
“They’re thinking of giving me a permanent position at the press,” said Huat. “If this goes well, maybe we can move out of the slums next year.”
“They’ve got a tracker on me, Huat,” said Beng irritably, feeling like a broken record. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t give up on yourself like that,” said Huat.
“It’s called being realistic.”
“I might be able to ask about a job for you,” Huat suggested.
Beng rolled his eyes.
“Don’t get yourself fired, that’s all I’m going to say,” he said.
“Funny, that sounds like advice I would give to you.”
“Touché.”
Huat clapped a hand on his shoulder, reassuring and protective.
“You’re catastrophising,” he said. “Just take it a day at a time. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“You’re very optimistic.”
“I’ve just been thinking, that’s all. Surely the Gahmen can’t have its hands in everything.”
Beng stared at him. “Speak a little louder, I’m sure the whole neighbourhood wants to hear you talking of treason,” he muttered at last.
Huat laughed, a little nervously. “I don’t mean it in a bad way,” he said, but kept his voice low. “But I’m just saying, there’s something out there even for you. I’m sure of it. You just hang tight; I know what I’m doing.”
Huat was always the forceful kind; it was sometimes very easy to believe him.
The days ran like clockwork.
At around five, the roof would begin to leak.
It rained invariably in the wee hours of the morning. It was due to some weather phenomenon that could only be properly discussed in big words that nobody actually cared about. In any case, the rain was the infuriating half-arsed kind that would carry on in miserable drips and drizzles for the next few hours. A splatter from the leaking roof hit Beng in the eye. He jerked awake and tried not to think about how much the weather resembled his life.
Father had left the house an hour before. He had run into some old friend who had offered him a probationary position at a small canning factory. Father had been very excited. He hadn’t thought that anyone would still offer someone his age any proper paid work. In fact, this was the first time he had managed to score any kind of job since the Steam Revival had begun—between his age, his sullen spells and his sudden fiery flashes of temper, it had not been easy for him to start over in this new economy. He had smoothed out his ragged best shirt and overlarge pants, and shined his shoes in preparation for his first day.
“You up?” Mother murmured from her bedding.
Beng crawled out of bed. The ground was cool and rough under his feet; he padded to the wash-bucket in the corner of the room, and wet his face. He could see soggy remnants of packed tobacco floating disgustingly in their limited supply of fresh water. Beng frowned. The stench of smoke lingered in the air, but barely so—Grandfather must have gone out as well.
“Go back to sleep, Ma,” Beng said. “It’s only six.”
She yawned widely and made no move to rise. She must be tired; she’d gotten home in the wee hours of the morning, even though she had not been assigned night shift work this week. Her heavy stumbling steps had woken Beng up, and her breath had been laced with the sourness of alcohol. It was a mercy that Father, tired out by the prospect of a new job and all that it could hold in store for him, had been in too deep a sleep to know this.
Her breathing evened out. Beng felt inexplicable resentment b
ubble within him.
He wasn’t very sure how the next few hours passed. It was always too much trouble to keep track. He did a bit of cleaning and dusting here and there, and at some point rallied together some biscuits for a meal. The early-morning coolness soon gave way into daybreak, and then into a muggy wet heat that would linger through most of the day. At some point Mother rose and went about getting herself ready. As usual, she made frivolous conversation that required no more than non-committal grunts by way of reply. And then she was out, and off to work. She wouldn’t be back for at least the next nine hours or so.
Then suddenly it was mid-afternoon, and the rain had stopped. The wet slimy crust of soaked leaves and rubbish at the sides of the street were beginning to bake in the sun; the odour permeated the room and was terrible. Beng slipped out of the hut at last. Soon it would be dark. There were precious few hours to spare.
He went by the street market, eyeing the baskets and leftover heaps for anything edible. There was a good pile of carrot tops lining the top of a rattan basket and he tucked them into his bag before anyone else saw. The market yielded few other offerings and Beng found himself following the railway tracks down into another station.
This station was somewhat out of the way, and one had to make the effort to trek down here, which meant the good stuff was largely untouched. The dustbins were full of cans and things that Beng crushed and took. He managed to bag some old bread and leftover gravy from one of the nicer ladies at the station tuck-shop, and then the whistle of the six o’clock train sang out into the air.
“All aboard!” cried the train conductor, resplendent in his starched uniform. “Please mind the platform gap!”
The air was clouded with steam. As the train began to rumble forward, Beng sprang into the back carriage; nobody seemed to notice or care. The train was picking up speed and he leaned against one of the carriage walls, trying to seem inconspicuous. With luck he would have alighted before the conductor made it into the end of the train to check for tickets.
A good ten minutes after, the train came to a halt. Beng clambered off like a shot, and made his way to the back of the City Hall Station before anyone could see him. He was a little tired, but it had been a good day out today. The sky was growing dark; any dimmer and it wouldn’t be quite safe to prowl outdoors alone.
Little lamps had come on in the slums at the back, and mixed odours of cooking filled the air. Grimy children darted in and out of the homes, reckless and noisy. He weaved his way through the rickety homes, keeping his head down and hiding his loot as best as he could. Father was home, seated cross-legged on the floor with his eyes shut. He was leaning against the wall, the dimmest corner of the unlit room, his face darkened by shadows.
He must have just reached home; Beng had hoped to be in time to welcome him, but he shouldn’t have been back for long anyway. He looked almost as though he was meditating, but he seemed unhappy.
“How was the factory?” Beng said, placing the foodstuff before him.
“Where did you go?” he said, at the same time.
“The usual,” Beng replied. “The markets, the next station. How was the factory?”
“We’ll go out together tomorrow,” he said. And before Beng could ask, he went on briskly, obviously trying to distract— “I walked past this store, they throw away all the old bread.”
Beng could not believe the wanton extravagance that high-end bread stores were willing to go to. He also could not believe that Father had somehow contrived to lose his job on his first day.
“What happened, Pa?” he said.
Father made a movement, something between a flinch and a shrug, vicious and angry, as though the very words had struck him.
“Don’t tell your mother,” he said brusquely.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he added, in a way that suggested the exact opposite.
“What happened?” Beng repeated.
“It’s nothing.”
Beng took a step forward, into something wet and warm. He lifted his foot and saw that it was red with blood.
“Um,” Beng said.
“What?”
“This doesn’t look like nothing.”
Father did not reply.
“Are you hurt?” asked Beng, hurrying forward and dropping to his knees in front of his father.
Close up, he could see the sorry state his father was in. His face was bruised and swollen, and there was an ugly gash on his leg that was still bleeding sluggishly. Father squared his jaw and glanced away, prideful even when in pain.
“Did they do that to you?” Beng asked, even as he scrambled around the hut looking for bandages and things.
“The boss said I was stealing,” he sighed heavily. “What to do? Old already, poor already, everyone can bully.”
There was an old shirt that looked reasonably clean, and Beng set about tearing it into strips.
“Maybe tomorrow you can explain—” he began, as he doused the bandages in the all-purpose ointment they had picked up a week or so ago. He was careful not to use too much, but his hands were shaking and he spilt more than was economical anyway. Father shook his head, eyes closed.
“No point. They were angry. I was angry. I hit someone.”
“You what?” Beng laid the largest soaked bandage on Father’s leg, and Father hissed through his teeth like a wounded animal. “Why did they think you were stealing?”
“I didn’t even do anything,” said Father, aggrieved. “Lies. All lies. They found out who I was and they didn’t want me there.”
Father was refusing to meet Beng’s eyes, and somehow that gave it away.
“They realised I was your son,” Beng ventured.
Father didn’t deny it.
“They have these files on everybody,” he said.
“You have to believe me, Pa,” Beng said, like a sinner seeking absolution, his words desperate and tumbling over each other. “I didn’t mean to.”
Father looked at him, his mind already somewhere else.
“Don’t tell your mother,” he said warningly.
“I said I wasn’t going to.”
Father nodded. There was a brief pause, and then he reached for a piece of bread. There was a brief silence, broken only by the sounds of him chewing gingerly, mindful of the darkening bruises on his jaw.
“The bread quite good,” he said inconsequentially.
Beng let out a bark of a laugh but the situation didn’t actually feel very funny at all. Father looked at him again, still considering.
And then, he added, worriedly, “But don’t tell your mother.”
Beng didn’t tell Mother, but she lost her shit the next day anyway.
She had stumbled home in the dead of night, tired from her shift, and hadn’t said much. The next day she went to work as usual, seemingly unaware of the fact that Father was sulking in the shadows instead of getting ready to go out. They endured a whole day of suspense before she came home that night—and she was livid.
“Why did you do it?” she said, as soon as she had stepped into the house. She stalked right up to Father, spoiling for a fight. Beng saw a flash of hurt in Father’s eyes, quickly blotted out by blustering anger.
“You think just because I’m poor, I’ll steal, is it?” he snapped back. “People say, then you believe?”
Mother glanced over at Huat, who had risen to his feet in dismay.
“What’s happening—” he began, but at the first indicator that he did not know anything, her eyes snapped to Beng at once.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“It’s not a big deal,” Beng said (technically this wasn’t telling), as Father looked at him in betrayal.
“Not a big deal?” she said, her voice growing sharper with every word. “What do you want us to eat now? What kind of reputation do you think you will have now? Why did you steal?”
Father found no way to provide a satisfactory answer, and hence comp
ensated with volume.
“First thing come home, already shouting at everyone!” he shouted. The irony was intense. “I don’t like, cannot ah?”
Huat took a step towards him, but Father lurched at him so violently that he fell back.
“It’s not Father’s fault,” Beng interjected. “They found out—”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” said Mother.
“But we ought to be fair—”
“I don’t want to listen.”
Mother looked at Father for a moment, her face suddenly pinched and pale with rage. Beng thought she was going to cry. But Mother was not the kind of woman to cry, just like Father was not the kind of man to yield in a confrontation.
“Did you steal their goods?” she asked again. Father leapt to his feet as if on cue, face twisted in outrage.
“All right, now, Ma,” Huat said, obviously thinking it was time to intervene. “This must be all one great miscommunication. I’m sure Pa didn’t steal—”
Nobody was listening to him.
“You all think this is a game,” Mother said suddenly. “You all think this is just a game. If I die, if I stop working today, what will become of all of you?”
She still wasn’t crying, but her tone was cold and hard, brittle with hurt in a way that made it worse than if she’d just started weeping outright. None of them knew what to say. She turned on her heel. In a few strides she had crossed the room and stormed out of the house.
There was a long, almost guilty silence. Huat looked from Father to Beng, and then Beng to Father, his expression pinched and upset.
“I’m going to work,” Huat said at last.
The door shut behind him.
Father and Beng looked at each other.
“I didn’t actually tell her,” Beng said pre-emptively.
Father sighed.
“She’ll get over it,” he said at last. It probably wasn’t the right thing to say. There were many things he should have said at this point, but he didn’t give voice to any of them. Beng didn’t expect him to either.