by Lu Huiyi
“This is different, I swear.”
“Your printing press, too,” Beng said empathetically. “There’s a pattern, see? Every time I try to get work somewhere, I nearly die.”
“Maybe it isn’t the work that’s the problem,” said Huat with infinite patience.
“I was minding my own business,” said Beng, defensively.
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Huat was earnest, even fervent. He was unstoppable when he got like this. “It’s the system. The system is the problem. I know somebody who understands.”
That was how Beng found himself in a dingy pub on a rainy morning.
There was a constant low hum coming from upstairs, which Huat said was from the work they did at the printing press. The pub below was a seedy, dim affair. The windows were mostly covered up with ancient crackling sheets of newspaper and there was nobody else in there besides a portly, miserable-looking man at the counter.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“My brother,” said Huat. “He’s seeking sanctuary.”
The man nodded. He turned and took a bottle from a shelf behind him, and poured a generous portion into a dusty shot-glass. He set it down on the counter, right in front of Beng.
“Here,” he said.
“I don’t drink,” Beng said, a little lamely.
“It’s not alcohol,” said the man. “We’re an all-inclusive organisation. This is blessed water.”
Beng wondered how long the water had been left out, but was too polite to ask. He reached for the glass.
“Wait,” said Huat.
He grabbed Beng’s hand—he had produced a penknife in his other hand—before Beng quite knew what was happening, there was a thin oozing line nicked into his palm and Huat was prodding at the wound.
“What on earth?” Beng gasped.
“Okay,” said Huat with satisfaction, as a single drop of blood blossomed in the stale water. “Now you drink it.”
“Oh, gross,” said Beng.
“Don’t be fussy. I’ve done this before too.”
“Yeah, but you’re gross,” said Beng, even as he, against his better judgement, threw the drink back and tried not to gag.
“Welcome, brother,” said the man. And then, to Huat— “Bring him upstairs, brother Archibald.”
“You know what this all seems like, don’t you?” Beng murmured to Huat, as they trooped noisily up the rickety, narrow wooden staircase at the back of the store.
“Don’t start,” said Huat.
“A cul—”
“Trust me,” Huat said, sharp and anxious. “You really don’t want to start.”
“Just saying it like it is, brother Archibald.”
Huat sighed dramatically, and placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, urging him forward.
“Look, it isn’t like that. Just don’t be so diffi—”
“—cult?”
“It’s safer here, all right? But that doesn’t mean you get to be so obnoxious about things.”
“I was just trying to finish your sentence for you,” said Beng, wiping his bloodied hand on his jeans. “Thinking alike, and all. I thought that was what people did when they join a—”
“AND we’re here!” Huat bellowed, shoving the door open.
There was just one lady inside, middle-aged, well-dressed, motherly and graceful.
“You do have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you, Archibald,” she said. She spoke in the kind of accent that richer Singaporeans had—neither here nor there, clear as a bell with a little bit of crunch at arbitrary syllables. “There’s no need to shout.”
“Sorry, Mother Helen,” said Huat humbly.
Beng looked at his brother, and then at Mother Helen, and then at his brother again.
“What?” said Huat.
“I thought we had the same mother,” said Beng. “This is a somewhat surprising turn of events.”
“Your brother is quite the funny one, isn’t he,” said Mother Helen.
“He’s overcompensating,” said Huat. “Does that when he’s nervous.”
She laughed at that. It was a genuine, ugly-chortling kind of laugh, not over-pretty or falsely polished. It made her seem a little more real, and Beng was briefly imbued with an impulse to like her.
“You have spirit,” she said to Beng. “I respect that. Why did you seek out sanctuary from the Gentlemen?”
“Um—” said Beng, not quite sure where to begin.
“He’s on the blacklist,” Huat answered for him, and her expression softened instantly.
“You don’t have to worry about that here,” she said. “The people here don’t believe in that sort of thing. You will find sanctuary here.”
“Sanctuary?” Beng asked. And then, unable to stop himself, “But why? I have nothing to give—”
She straightened up a little more.
“There is always room for those who need it,” she told him.
She smiled, beatific and gentle. She must have practised it in the mirror, Beng thought, with a sudden irresistible flash of irreverence.
“All the important answers are here, child,” she went on. “There is no longer a need to ask why.”
“So we’re kind of like—insurgents,” said Beng.
Huat cast a look at him. They were alone now, in the small printing press. Mother Helen had swept out “on an errand”, and the two of them had been left with the task of soaking and shaping coconut fibres into square frames, and setting them out to dry.
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” he replied delicately, but he didn’t say how he would have put it.
“Archibald, rebel against the State,” Beng tried. “It doesn’t have a very impressive ring to it. The only thing that sounds dumber might just be Beng, blacklisted member of a cul—”
“Will you stop saying that?” Huat snapped, exasperated. “I’ve been working with the people here for a while. They’re decent people. And more importantly, they’re the only chance you’ll get in this country now.”
“What are they?”
“Just people who are discontented. Unhappy. We’ve got thugs taking over the country now, and that’s not how things should be. The Gahmen is just a collection of crooks and gangsters, and the educated people, the people with morals and ideas and talents, we’ve been pushed to the sidelines and made to do all this menial work for them. The Gentlemen want to restore things and help the country to do better.”
“Why is it called the Gentlemen?”
“Cultured men, who embody what it means to be truly civilised and enlightened. That’s in our creed. Which is in our guidebook. Which I can pass to you—we’ve got a good supply.”
“Is that the book you’re always reading?”
“It bears re-reading.”
Huat fumbled through his bag and dug out the inky tract, ragged and fraying at the edges.
“Look through it,” he commanded. “You don’t want to seem ignorant.”
Beng pocketed the tract. Huat looked approving.
“Is Mother Helen one of the gentlemen?”
“’Course not,” said Huat, scandalised. “She’s a woman.”
“Oh,” said Beng. “So we’re one of those organisations.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Huat, who was perfectly un-ridiculous as he sat, sweaty and serious and arm-deep in a tub of plant pulp, preaching anti-establishment ideology while making paper from scratch. “She’s a mother.”
“What?”
“Metaphorically speaking.”
“What?”
Huat pushed another tub towards him; Beng got to work without even thinking about it.
“Everyone has a role to play,” Huat said calmly. “And if you play yours well, the Gentlemen will look after you. Not all companies are under the control of the Gahmen and their Society. We’ve got properties and businesses—we just need to keep things running while we get stronger.”
“This whole thing is a lot bigger than what I thought I was signing up for,
” said Beng. “Can I plead false advertising?”
Huat rolled his eyes. It was a familiar gesture on his part, disarmingly so in their current circumstances.
“You were already in trouble from day one,” said Huat. “The day the Society attacked you and you got into their bad books, you were screwed. This is the best solution I know.”
He made a fair point.
“So what do I have to do?” Beng asked. “As in, not right this moment—but now that I’m in. Or actually—am I in? What do I do?”
“Don’t overthink it,” said Huat. “Just work hard, and stay useful. There’s always a place for people who make themselves useful—it’ll be all right.”
Huat’s definition of “all right” was apparently why Beng found himself skulking around a week later, trying to look as inconspicuous as one could look with a cap pulled over his eyes and a black backpack slung across his shoulders.
He was all jitters—this was something he never imagined he would be doing, especially back in the day when he imagined that he would be working from behind a desk, some sort of respectable nine-to-five stint that he would never be afraid to tell anyone about.
His clients comprised a gaggle of teenagers, mostly well-off; the Gentlemen seemed to minimise their dealings with the poor and the bedraggled, as far as they could. These young people bore the overpowering confidence of the very youthful and very wealthy, the kind of confidence that came with years of living without consequences. They made eye contact; the oldest of the group slipped him an envelope, fat with cash.
The transaction was wordless. It was a routine; it wasn’t the first time Beng had done it—his first run had been a couple of days ago, though in a different location. He tucked the money away and then retrieved a sealed package from his backpack. The teenagers took it and left without looking back; he waited a while longer before leaving from a different direction.
Apparently, to be truly civilised and enlightened entailed peddling crack to underage, over-privileged brats. Beng wasn’t quite sure what he felt about that. But he was getting a relatively good cut of the profits, and the family was going to eat well this week.
Make yourself useful, Beng thought. He tried to seem nonchalant, but he knew he was still moving a bit too fast to avoid all suspicion. Maybe he would get used to it. This was the best solution he knew.
They were at dinner, a proper sit-down affair for the entire clan. It was a monthly event, and apparently a significant one. Beng hadn’t wanted to go at first, and when he initially came in he regretted it further. It was held in a house far too nice for the likes of him, and they had paid too much on rickshaw rides and walked so extensively just to get there, that Beng’s polo shirt was wet with perspiration. The members in attendance were of varying ages, but all of them sat like students at carefully-set tables, and each table placing came adorned with a placard declaring one’s name and date of membership. Like tombstones. Huat’s said ARCHIBALD in large rounded letters, but Beng couldn’t bring himself to laugh at it anymore, because most people seemed to be using some sort of fake name or another.
When Father Joseph came in—head of the Gentlemen, husband to Helen, a man in his mid-seventies who had been a high-flying tycoon before the Deprivation—he grinned, wolfish and familiar, with a casual boyish amiability Beng had not expected from someone whom Huat had always spoken of with such reverence.
“This month has been good to us,” he said. “We have worked hard and earned well—and you’ll see it in the kind of food our lovely wives have made.”
The crowd gave an appreciative murmur.
“This is your home,” he said. “Please, be comfortable and eat. Today is a day of rest for us all.”
The food was indeed of astounding quality; Beng, who had long since gotten used to a dull ache in his stomach, could barely stop himself from grabbing and snatching like the poor slum-dweller that he was. It was only when he was a little more satiated that he could begin to tune in to the hum of conversation around him.
The men talked about mundane and pleasant things—past football allegiances, funny family stories, army experiences for those who had done their compulsory military service before the Deprivation. Beng found himself eager, almost starved for such conversations. His friends from school had long since drifted out of reach—he didn’t know how to contact them anymore and their lives had been so unstable and uncomfortable that there was no space for the kind of idle frivolity that had defined his old friendships anyway. Here were people talking about normal things—he might as well have been at a late-night supper joint or taking a quick break in the quieter parts of school.
There was a man next to him who went by the name of Francis, if his placard was to be trusted. He was in his sixties, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, and was obviously one of the elder and more established members of the Gentlemen. He turned to Beng midway through the meal, lowering his voice in an almost-conspiratorial manner.
“Brother Archibald said you could be very powerful,” he said, without preamble.
Beng was distinctly unnerved.
“I can? I mean, Huat said that?”
“I believe his name is Archibald.”
“Oh, not you too.”
“Anyone can be reborn here,” said Elder Francis, the mildest hint of reproach flickering across his face. Beng felt inexplicably guilty, in a way that he resented and resisted. “This name that he has chosen is meant to signify his rebirth. Let’s not make light of it.”
“Okay, okay,” said Beng. “But what did Hua—Archi—he—my brother tell you?”
“He just said that you had an episode once, when you defended yourself with some unknown energy.”
“Kind of—”
“Kind of?”
“It wasn’t really—I don’t know how to describe it. But it wasn’t like I had unleashed some sort of special power. The power was—it was me. But it also felt more like I had become something else.”
Elder Francis looked at him.
“Interesting,” he said slowly. He stared at Beng for a long time, and then at his arm.
“Um,” said Beng.
“Don’t be worried,” said Huat, leaning in suddenly to join the conversation. “Elder Francis is in charge of scientific research and combat training here—if anyone can help, it would be him.”
“You think so?” said Beng, a little unsure as to what he was asking about.
“That chip you’ve got on you,” said Elder Francis, emerging from the throes of thought. “I don’t think it’s just to track you—I’m certain it holds your capabilities back.”
“What makes you think so?”
“You’re not the first to be like this,” he said. He leaned in closer; his eyes were intrigued. “We’ve been doing research into this, and we can help you to harness it. I’ve been waiting to talk to you, and what you’re telling me is precisely what we were hoping for. Beng, my boy, this may be just what we need to change the world.”
Chapter 6
“Where are you going?” Grandfather asked, looking up in alarm.
Beng stopped in his tracks, lumpy haversack in hand, feeling every bit as foolish as he thought he looked. There was a horse-drawn carriage outside their house, and an irate mule grunting and kicking stray barrels and canvases around, much to the chagrin of their neighbours.
“I’ve some work to attend to,” he managed lamely. Grandfather looked at him, his wrinkled, leathery face twisted into a petulant scowl. Grandfather was always sharper than he let on; it was obvious that he had seen through the flimsy lie.
“Last night you also came back so late.”
“That was a work dinner, I told you that.”
Grandfather turned that over in his mind.
“Don’t anyhow,” he said brusquely, gesturing to the haversack. “Last time you were never like this.” He seemed like he was going to start on one of his wistful, half-angry harangues, but then he restrained himself and merely said, “Come back home early.
”
“I’ll be back once I’m done with work,” Beng said, in what he hoped was a placating, confident tone.
“You better not make your mother upset.”
“Have I ever?” Beng said, as Elder Francis stepped out of the carriage, obviously tired of waiting. Beng hadn’t even expected an elder, of all people, to come personally to get him. He had expected one of the lower-ranked Gentlemen, some lackey quite like himself. He hurried to the door at once. Elder Francis must not be kept waiting.
“Where are you going?” Grandfather repeated, with characteristic stubbornness.
“I—look, Huat will explain.”
Beng scrambled out of the shack and into the carriage before Grandfather could detain him any further. Next to the tall, composed figure of Elder Francis, Beng felt gawky and out-of-place, a bumpkin from the back-alley slums rather than the powerful warrior that they seemed to believe he could become. But it was too late for regrets. The mule began to trudge out of the slums, and they left City Hall behind.
He hadn’t expected them to get down to business so quickly, but Elder Francis, as he learnt, was the kind of man who didn’t like to wait once things had been set in motion. Even before last night’s meal was over, he had begun making arrangements, and Beng found himself being led by helpful elders out of the mansion and off to a long interview at another base. Their knack at being both very forceful and very polite, as well as Huat’s great enthusiasm on his behalf, pushed him into going along with it, overwhelmed and a little gratified by the amount of attention devoted to him. They had issued instructions to pack and sent him home in the wee hours of the night, and now they were back for him mere hours later. There was no time for him to question or back out.
The mule clopped on as morning wore into afternoon. They were no different from any of the rich folks who now travelled purely by way of carriage rides, and short of passing envious glances, nobody paid them very much attention at all.
The walls were concrete, the ground was concrete, and the entire space was a rabbits’ burrow of tunnels and unexpected rooms. It was clean, though spartan, and they had to get through so many locks and passwords and contact points to get in that Beng felt both isolated and secure. Beng wasn’t quite sure why he’d allowed himself to be brought here without the slightest protest, going like a lamb to slaughter, but he was there already and there was no help for it now.