He enters the doorway to the marble hall, with its chandelier still encased in plastic. There are flats upon flats up there, reached by twin lifts. In his new apartment, a room for his mother if she wants it. In her early seventies she is still spry, but it is best to be prepared. For now, all she has to do is move across the road. Rooms for his two children, cool, safe, full of the things he never had in his childhood. The girl’s room, he imagines, will be a parlour for a princess, a bed scattered with pink cushions and plump, stuffed hearts. The boy, a year younger, will choose something more austere: posters of footballers, a gaming laptop. In the lounge, a home theatre with padded seats: this is where the family will gather in the evening, or on slow weekends. And then the master bedroom that he and his wife have talked about. They have already chosen the furniture: a baroque dressing-table, a four-poster bed, and white, billowing curtains for the long, wall-length window that looks out over the city.
The lifts are not yet working, but it’s easy enough to climb up the staircase to the apartment. But when he pauses at the foot of the stairs, he becomes aware of a smell. At first, it’s very faint. Sweat, perhaps, or a touch of mould? Of course the air is trapped here, unable to circulate through the development; things will be very different when the air conditioning is installed. And then he remembers what the foreman said to him, in confidence: something about drainage in the basement car park being a problem, how water gathers there, after storms. He walks forward, to the door at the top of the car park stairs. When he opens it, the smell is stronger now, like an uncovered drain in sunlight. He descends, leaving the door to open to give light, cupping his hand over his nose, nauseated. Two flights of stairs, and another door to open. The air is rancid now, as if something has died in there, far below ground. With his one free hand, he fumbles for the switch of the temporary lighting the workers have rigged up. Light floods the parking garage. It is worse than he feared: a ramp slopes away into a surface of dark, brackish water. He takes a step downwards, then another, trying to figure out how serious this is, how deeply the garage is flooded. Disgust turns quickly to anger: he should never have trusted the agent, with his proffered cigarettes and easy smile.
When he turns to go, he hears a splashing in the water. There’s something in here with him. A fish, perhaps, washed in from a storm drain. But it seems to be bigger than that; out of the corner of his eye, in the darkness, he sees a flash of white, a flicker of what might be a fin or even a wing. Then a call, a single repeated syllable from the darkness of one corner, which is answered by other voices from other recesses of the room, and then a flutter, as if wings are being outstretched. He turns, scrabbles up the stairs, and bolts the door after him.
Make sure you clean it out, he tells the agent on the phone. Fix the drainage, or there’ll be trouble. And bring in pest control. When he finishes talking, he is sweating. Around him the Bangladeshi workers stir, look at him in puzzlement, and then turn their eyes quickly down. He realises that he has been shouting. The agent, of course, deserves this. But he still feels ashamed. Where, he wonders, does this sudden anger in him come from? Where does it hide, and what brings it so quickly to the surface these days?
When he returns home, he is calmer. He swims laps in the condominium pool, one after another, and then calls to cancel an afternoon meeting. Then a shower, and the steel and glass of the lift, rising upwards. Home. The apartment is empty in the early afternoon. He looks out, across the basin to the new National Stadium, glistening in the sunlight.
Yet he still feels uneasy here, at this moment, time has stopped, snatched out of everyday routine. He walks the long corridor to the master bedroom, step by step, slippers on tile, trying the doors of his children’s rooms. The girl’s is open: the bed neatly made, a notebook computer perched, almost decoratively, on an overly tidy desk. Framed pictures in heart-shaped frames. In one, the girl blows a kiss to her schoolmate, Nadia, the tomboyish one with the shorter hair, the one she listed as “married” to on Facebook. Perhaps they should talk to her about whether this is appropriate? He closes the door, pads further down the corridor. The boy’s room is locked, and he rattles the handle, feeling the anger in him rise. What does the boy have to hide?
We are a happy family, he pictures himself telling his son in the evening. And so we should have no secrets from each other. Correct or not? Life has a rhythm now. On weekdays, work, then tuition for the children. On Sunday, Mass: not at the Church of his childhood, but a new building, as luxurious as a cinema. He is buoyed up by his newly rediscovered faith: his family accompanies him, and the girl sings in the choir. He returns, refreshed, to the apartment. And yet he has an uneasy sense that something is missing in this home that is so full of things. Or perhaps there is something that should not be here: loneliness, persistent, like the echoes of a distant bell. Today, his wife and his children return, one by one, and the house fills up with noise again. He tries to talk to his son about the locked door, but the boy looks at him, and then turns his eyes down, just as the workers did. Anger flares again, but he forces it back, and does not probe further.
At night, he dreams of birds. Not sparrows, or mynahs, or bulbuls. These are heavy birds with stubby wings and sharp beaks. They crowd around him, shuffling on tiny feet in an elaborate tango. One of them pushes him; he falls, and the birds collapse on him, like dominoes. They rub against him, slobbering and slithering, so that he is drowning in a basement of wet, bloated, fishy bodies. He wrestles himself to the surface, to the bottom of the stairs. But he cannot not move: the birds are waiting for him, lined up on the higher treads, looking at him with cruel, hard eyes. Every now and then, one reaches forward and pecks at him experimentally. Strangely enough, this tickles him more than it hurts, and he suddenly has the urge to laugh.
At two o’clock, he wakes, his mouth dry. He exits the bed quietly, pads to the kitchen, and pours himself water. The apartment is flooded with moonlight. In the living room, he looks out over the city, gleaming silver. Then he checks email and social media on his handphone, scrolling down and down, looking for distractions. An hour later, his wife comes in search of him, and leads him back to bed.
The birds again. They have escaped from the basement, but they seem to have showered, and been blow-dried. They ambush him in the carport, on the flattened boxes left by the Bangladeshi workers. They are huge and fluffy; one lumbers over and presses him against the wall. He is frightened that he might suffocate, but just as the feathers reach his lips, he feels them dissolve into something sweet and dry, like kueh bangkit in the mouth. He bites, almost involuntarily, and something sticky oozes over his tongue. He sucks and nibbles away, gnawing his way back into memory. And then, finally, two hours of dreamless sleep.
He wakes again a little after six, tired out, but his mind active. Sunday, and the house will still be quiet for hours. He gets up quietly, feeling in the wardrobes for a T-shirt and shorts. A short walk, to see the sunrise.
Outside the condo gates, he moves quickly along the road, flexing his shoulders, but unable to shake off a stiffness that tightens around him. As a young man, he never realised how middle age would ambush him. Not so much physically, but emotionally. Here you are at the prime of your life, a career of solid achievement behind you, loving and loved. And yet you feel fears that you never felt before. Let’s say you are asked to speak in front of a crowd. You used to enjoy this: to build rapport through a few jokes, some easy deprecation, and then to inspire. This has always been second nature to you, even though in conversation you are often tongue-tied: speaking is a talent, people say, and one that you have made full use of. Yet when you get on the stage now, to the applause, you feel a trace, somewhere, of panic. You push it back, hide it, start to speak. The moment passes. And yet, five minutes later, you find that a word or a memory overwhelms you with emotion. Your voice breaks, you tear: you cover your confusion by coughing, taking a sip of water.
How do you respond to this, in speaking but also in life? Mark out those boundaries around yours
elf and the ones you love. Live inside them. Do not think of the past, or of what might lie outside the wall. Seal up the basement: comfort yourself with what you know. You may not be entirely happy, you may not be happy at all, but you will be safe. It does not matter if you hurt yourself. Insecurity is a scab that you pick at, a wound that you always, deliciously, want to keep open.
Perhaps it’s not so simple. There’s a memory there, on the tip of his tongue. He turns the corner of the road, walks out onto the embankment by the water, with its railings and slender bridge. Across the Kallang Basin the city is growing lighter, although the sun has not yet quite risen. What was it his mother said, of Ani, all those years ago?
I am not happy. I cannot bear it that she might be happy.
He shivers. There’s a faint breeze, and the light is growing. For a moment, land and water merge. And then, as the sun rises, the sound of wings overhead. A single bird first, then another, then many more. As he looks up, the sky darkens, but not with the threat of rain.
Gan Rou, Kong Bak
JIA WEN WAITED till after breakfast to call his sister to say he wouldn’t be coming to the lying-in-state. Too hot. Too much standing in line on the Padang. And for what? Just to see preserved meat in a coffin. There was an intake of breath on the line. He pictured Jacqueline, at that marble counter in her flat, counting up to ten before replying, all emotion wrung out of her voice. Don’t disrespect him. He’s our founding father. I never knew before how much he did for us. Aren’t you grateful? “Wouldn’t be good for my health, too,” he said hurriedly. “My condition. I’d have to pack more eyedrops than Boy Boy packs toys. And the sun on my skin. You know what that does.”
Silence on the line. He could hear her whispering to Samuel, agitated. “Ger,” she said quickly, “text you back in five?”
Sure enough, in five minutes, the phone vibrated in his hand. OK. So you dun come. But I need to bring Hani to zhao gu Boy Boy. Come at 10 and babysit the pig?
He stood up, feeling the pain creeping through the knees and ankles, the itch of his eyes. Not a good day, he replied, but a minute later, the phone was squirming again in his hand. Please! Please! And then, in a second message, a bright red, fleshy, beating heart.
• • •
He reached her flat a little after ten. Big Sister and Brother-in-law lived in a massive public housing complex that had materialised, like a spaceship, over Chinatown a few years before. At street level he struggled, as ever, to find the correct lift. Then a short walk through the sky garden twenty storeys above the street to his sister’s flat.
“Jia Wen! How are you? Feeling better today, I hope?”
Samuel, his brother-in-law, opened the door with his usual heartiness, thrusting a hand stiffly forward in greeting. He ushered Jia Wen into the flat where Hani, the maid, brought them glasses of water.
“Jacq’s still getting Boy Boy ready.”
He could hear the shower running, and beneath it a sound like a scream, not quite human.
“It’s really so good of you to help us.” Samuel sat opposite Jia Wen, his arm still held conspicuously in front of him.
“Is that an iWatch?” Jia Wen realised what was expected of him.
His brother-in-law’s face brightened. “Yes, yes. Apple Watch. Lined up for it in San Francisco. So long! Thought I’d miss the plane!”
He proceeded to demonstrate all the features of the device. There was even an app to control the Korean crockpot they had in the kitchen, so that freshly-cooked pork stew would be waiting when they returned this evening. Then the sound of the shower stopped, and a hairdryer started up, along with a child’s plaintive voice. Samuel’s voice dropped in volume.
“Ah Wen? Don’t play the joker about the pig, eh? Not this time.”
A door opened, and feet pattered across marble. He looked up to his nephew’s chubby, puzzled face.
• • •
Samuel’s comments weren’t entirely fair, he thought: after all, his brother-in-law had led him on. He remembered a family gathering at that Teochew restaurant a year or so ago, feasting on silver pomfret swimming in a sour-plum sea, oatmeal prawns, crispy chicken. Juicy conversations that withered and twisted into complaints, with the lazy Susan spinning round and round. Boy Boy, he noticed at the time, drew back from interaction, talking only to his mother. His skin was white, unblemished, his nose upturned, a fringe cutting at a jaunty angle through his black, black hair. Three years old then, and yet his mother carried him as if he were porcelain, frightened that he might drop, placing him with infinite care into the high chair. Hani fussed over him when he ate, sorting through a series of implements from a Tupperware box, almost as though preparing for surgery, and then taking up a small pair of scissors to cut up the food.
“Boy Boy’s got a new pet,” Samuel had announced, seeing the direction of his gaze. “A little pig.”
“Is it? What’s his name?
“Her name. Teacup.” This reply was from Boy Boy himself, almost spit out.
“Lucky we’re not eating any of his relatives today.”
“Uncle Jia Wen knows. He’s a good cook,” Samuel added. “Boy Boy, tell us what foods we eat are made of pork.”
The boy pouted, turned his eyes down, and remained silent.
“Suckling pig,” Samuel prompted. “What else do you know? Tell Uncle.”
The child turned his face away.
“Kong bak,” Jia Wen said to help out. “Do you remember how you like it? All that juicy belly flesh melting in your mouth.”
Boy Boy looked back at him from the safety of Hani’s arms. He went on. Pig flesh was everywhere in Hokkien cuisine. Where would kway chap be without intestines? Char kway teow without lard? A river of liquid flesh, flowing across the island, oiling gullets, stomachs, and intestines, only drying up at New Year into those little, charred squares of bak kwa.
He felt a sharp kick on his ankle. “Boy Boy’s so sensitive,” his sister whispered. “Don’t traumatise him.” But he was not so sure. He thought that he had seen on the boy’s face the flicker of comradeship: a sly, fleeting smile.
• • •
He hadn’t got to see the pig until a few weeks later. He’d called on his sister about this or that one weekend, early on a hot, dry afternoon, the air acrid with the smoke from fires in Sumatra. The metal gate to the flat was locked, and she’d caught him before he pressed the bell, raising a finger to her lips. She unbolted the lock, and then took his hand.
“Quiet. They’re sleeping.”
Jacq had led him into the living room, over the cool marble, under the draught from the ceiling fan. She pointed to the sofa. Boy Boy and the pig were lying together, eyes closed, heads leaning towards each other on the same plump cushion. The pig was smaller than he’d expected, a sleek little torpedo of black, ending in a wet, upturned snout that perfectly matched the boy’s snub nose. It had extended a little trotter onto the pillow, near to Boy Boy’s clenched fist. Fist-bumping, maybe. Or sparring?
In the kitchen, with the door closed, he questioned her. Wasn’t it illegal to keep a pig in public housing?
“Ger, it’s okay. Samuel check online. Cats not allowed. But nothing about pigs. Anyway, we don’t take it out much. Only afternoons when no one’s around.”
“What about your Malay friends? Hani?”
“They don’t mind, what. We asked her. Christian, you know?”
He could hear that catch in her voice that always came before they fought. He took out an eyedrop sachet, and twisted the top.
“Boy Boy seems happy.”
She smiled. “He really loves that pig.”
“Good for him, at that age, to learn to care for something else.”
She returned the peace offering. “Ger, Samuel says the eyedrops are much cheaper in JB. We can pick them up the next time we go to Giant.”
“How much? I’ll give you the money now.”
“No need, no need. Your last checkup okay?” And she’d poured him another glass of water from t
he kettle.
• • •
Today, as the family got ready to go out to the lying-in-state, Jia Wen felt his nephew’s little hands, soft as tofu, pushing against the flesh of his calves.
“Boy Boy,” said Samuel. “Call Uncle.”
“Uncle.”
“Yong Huayu?” Samuel prompted him, awkwardly, to use Mandarin.
But the boy stayed stubbornly silent, until his mother bustled in, nails as immaculate as little claws, hair blow-dried into a wave. She sized the situation up.
“Ger, pre-school says Mandarin’s his weakest subject. So we’re trying to help by speaking more at home.”
“I’ve been doing some reading,” Samuel added. “Apparently it’s best if one parent talks to him in one language, one the other. But neither of us speak Mandarin very well.”
“So we decided that we’d get him to talk in Mandarin to the pig,” Jacqueline completed his thought. “But he should be able to talk to you, too.”
She squatted down, and reached for her son. “Boy Boy, say something in Mandarin to Uncle Jia Wen.”
The child pouted, shrugged, and then looked up at him again.
“Uncle. Ruguo ni hungry de hua, fridge limian you hen hao chi de bak kwa.”
He was about to reply, when Samuel interrupted him with a sigh, and called the boy over.
“Boy, how you say ‘hungry’?”
“Duzi e.”
“Fridge?”
“Bing xiang.”
“Bak kwa is Hokkien. How to say in Mandarin?”
“Rou gan.”
“Say again, Boy Boy.”
“Ruguo ni duzi e de hua, bingxiang limian you hen hao chi de rou gan.”
“Very good! I’m sure Uncle Jia Wen will like to try the bak kwa in the fridge.”
Jacq wrinkled up her nose, and whispered to her brother. “I still don’t think it’s quite right, his pronunciation. Not fluent. Like an ang moh, a white person, talking.”
It wasn’t really that, Jia Wen thought. More like a kind of flattening, as if all the tastiness, the juices of the sentence had been squeezed out.
Heaven Has Eyes Page 7