by Jeremy Tiang
She nodded. “Do you know what this means, sir?” She was pointing at the walls, which were covered with wild slashes of paint (the Styrofoam box, it emerged, had been full of spray paint—the guard had heard the clanking metal, but assumed it was drink cans). They were Chinese characters, not all of which I recognised. Chen’s name. Something about retribution. Some dates. It was a statement of something, or maybe her story. I would have to ask Soong about it later.
Thinking of Soong brought me back to what was in store for me later, after last night. Soong was incapable of subtlety, and what he thought of as innuendo would no doubt be crude and broad enough to ensure the whole office knew what had happened in the bar. I would deny it, of course, but people notice things, and I had been looking at Li Hsia a certain way all week.
“Sir?” said the policewoman. She was waiting for me to translate the writing for her. I didn’t want to admit my Mandarin wasn’t good enough to decipher the rant of the woman from China, and took a guess. It was about the circumstances of her husband’s death, I told her. It was about a man who came to this country to earn money and ended up dead.
The policewoman nodded. “But we heard all that at the inquest, sir. I remember reading about it. My colleague gave evidence. It was very sad, but these things happen.” She gestured around her. “I don’t understand people like this. Why would she do such a thing? How will she remember him now?”
It was then that I realised the dust we were standing in was not dust. We were in a pool of small grey particles, dotted with charred white lumps. She had tipped her husband’s ashes out onto the very spot where he met his end, and when the lift doors opened for me, some of it had blown in. We would never get all of it out, it was so fine. There would always be a little of him here.
“She must be crazy,” the policewoman was saying. “Why do these people behave like this? When my father died I was sad, but I didn’t behave like this. These people don’t understand.”
And it made sense to me, just at that moment, why you would want to leave your husband here, in this strange land, and not bring any of him back with you. I understood, but there was no way I could have told her any of this, I didn’t have the right words. Already I was thinking: I am in the wrong place. There is nothing for me to do here. I should go downstairs, where there is coffee, and normalcy, and the day can begin as usual. It will be a difficult morning, but the fuss over the destroyed showroom will distract Soong from mischief. Li Hsia, graceful as always, will pretend nothing happened last night. I will be all right, I thought. Everything will be all right.
I told the policewoman I needed to get the clear-up underway. She nodded. She had the situation under control. I pressed the button for the lift and we waited, awkwardly, until it arrived. At the faint ding of the bell, Mrs Chen’s head jerked up, her lips silently twitching. She looked straight at me with the wild stare of a cornered animal, trapped and furious, bright with helpless energy. Her eyes were no longer human. I backed slowly into the lift, but could not break her gaze until the doors slid shut between us.
Stray
THE FRIEND WHO lent Li Hsia the Bangkok flat warned her not to leave the sinks unplugged. “I used to get cockroaches, not many, maybe a couple each month. None since I started doing this.” It gave her a queasy feeling every time she had to lift a stopper to brush her teeth or wash a cup. As if there might be a fat brown roach lurking in the pipes, waiting to shove its nasty bulk through the plughole at the first chink of light. She kept one hand positioned above the tap, ready to drown the bastard if necessary.
The flat was smaller than she had expected, no more than a glorified bedroom with a toilet attached, on the top floor of a squat concrete building full of similar shoeboxes. No lift, but at least there was a reasonable view of the city’s scattered skyscrapers. It was a short walk to the BTS station, and her friend assured her that in a few minutes she could be back in civilisation.
Her presence here was one of those coincidences only possible in the age of the Internet. Skimming Facebook whilst watching television one night, she’d noticed her photographer friend Sam—really, an acquaintance, someone she’d been at university with—mention heading back to London for his first solo show. On a whim she dropped him a message asking what would happen to his flat, and by the next day they were making plans for her to take over the place.
Her colleagues were unsurprised when she announced she was going. Officially, she had a lot of leave stored up, like a good workaholic, needing to be used by the end of the year. Everyone knew what had really happened, and it was understandable that she would want to hide her face for a while. Nobody was unsympathetic, exactly, but Li Hsia was not the sort of person who inspired warmth. She knew they all thought she had been asking for it, that it was just a matter of time, and the worst of it was that they were right.
She was used to travelling light, and arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport with just a small suitcase, like an air hostess. It was only a couple of hours from Singapore, and she could always go back if she had forgotten anything crucial. The keys were with a neighbour, Allan, who turned out to be a sturdy, shortish American, maybe forty, with a goatee and one earring.
“How long are you in Bangkok?” he asked, leaning in his doorway.
“A month.” She was polite, but careful not to say too much. No sense encouraging superfluous friendships.
“Sam didn’t think he’d find anyone to sublet for such a short time.”
“It’s just right for me. Cheaper than a hotel.”
“Well, enjoy it. Knock on the wall if you need anything.” His shoulder still slouched against the doorjamb, he leaned forward to shake her hand.
The windows were painted shut, presumably to keep mosquitoes out, so she had the air-conditioning on all the time. Her first evening there, she went to the 7-Eleven and found some surprisingly edible reheatable rice-and-curry dishes. She filled Sam’s fridge with food and bottled water. She could stay in for days, if necessary. That first evening she ate greedily, heating packets of fried noodles and chicken chunks in sweet sauce. She would allow this, a few days of sloth, perhaps gaining some weight and letting her hair go greasy.
The practical part of her wanted to find a purpose, to not waste this month. It should feel like a gift to herself, an entire thirty days given over to emptiness, no work, no family. She knew no one in Bangkok and didn’t speak the language. Her e-mail was set to automatically rebuff all enquiries (“Li Hsia is away till the end of the month. If your message is urgent, please contact” and then the names of two other people in her department). The flat seemed to hum with a sense of protectiveness, a capsule with just her in it, adrift in the wide world.
Sam had left her the number of his cleaner, but she decided not to call. It wasn’t the money, a few dollars a week; she just felt odd about having someone come in to clean a space this small. She was happy to do it herself; it took about ten minutes to sweep everywhere, including under the bed. She wondered briefly if she was depriving this woman of her income for the month, but shrugged the thought away. You can’t worry about everyone.
She drew up a timetable—a swim first thing in the morning, a jog in the evening—then laughed at her earnestness. There were too many hours in the day to fill. It demanded a big project, maybe learning a language or knitting a cardigan, but she wasn’t ready to commit to anything that large. For now she was happy to work her way through Sam’s shelves, full of the sorts of books she had always meant to read. How had they drifted apart so easily after university, she wondered, when their tastes were so similar? It was a pleasant surprise when he decided to set up a studio in Thailand, so close to her in Singapore, but they never managed to find the time to meet.
The walls of the flat were papered with poster-sized prints of Sam’s work. Some of them had been taken from these very windows, representing Bangkok as a fallen futuristic city, tall twisted towers arising from the jungle. Others were of clouds, the moon, street corners. None of them contained peopl
e, as if Sam had decided human beings were not a worthy subject. It unsettled her, waking up to these blotches of colour, blown up beyond their natural size. Eventually she covered them with the spare bedsheet.
By and large, she managed to drift quite pleasantly, letting one hour slip by, and then another, until it became time for a meal. Perhaps this was what is meant by “living in the present”. It was only at bad moments that unwelcome thoughts pressed into her mind, the sweet nightmare of the last year. Such a clever woman, falling into cliché and sleeping with her manager, the whole office knowing. And then the chill of being left. Now he swept off to lunch without even looking at her, and she had to go to the staff canteen like everyone else. As soon as she got back, she decided, she would apply for a transfer to a different department. She would probably get it—she interviewed well, and had the sort of CV that catches the eye.
Although she tried not to go out when there were footsteps on the stairs, inevitably she ran into Allan and his Thai girlfriend on the landing, arriving with armfuls of shopping just as she was locking up. “Going out?” he said, amiable, and she nodded, even though she was only heading down to put the remains of her dinner in the communal bin.
“You spending this whole month here in Bangkok?”
She nodded again, and then feeling that more might be required of her, added, “I like to get to know a city really well. To experience living there.”
He smiled lazily, mentally bracketing her alongside himself, one of nature’s drifters. A traveller, not a tourist. She managed to imply with her eyes that she had somewhere urgent to be, and scuttled apologetically down the stairs, feeling the glare of the Thai girlfriend at her back. Allan hadn’t introduced them.
Just in case he asked her the next time they met, she felt she should go somewhere. An expedition. She allowed herself the decadence of an afternoon movie at Siam Paragon, but that was just like Singapore, a multiplex inside a giant shopping centre. After the film she walked along the glittering passageways. It was exactly the same: Topshop, River Island, Giordano. Even on a weekday afternoon the building was crowded, full of people wandering as if dazed by visions of plenty, carrying Abercrombie and Fitch carrier bags printed with athletic American torsos. She had a Starbucks coffee and felt like an international fraud.
She knew she ought to make an effort, visit a floating market or a temple, but the idea of organising this exhausted her. She rode the skytrain to the end of the line, a bubble gliding over the rooftops of Bangkok. It was a patchy city, some bright new buildings, but also many old ones that desperately needed repainting. Walking back to her flat, she noticed courtyards and corners encrusted with plastic bags and dirt.
Every street she walked down smelt faintly of sewage. And yet the Thai people themselves were fastidious, always neatly turned out. The BTS at rush hour, even on the hottest day, did not contain the humming stink of tired bodies pressed close together, as subway trains in other cities always seemed to. She was taking more and more trains now, pressing herself into the crowds of the city. As long as she stayed silent, no one knew she didn’t belong here.
At night she stayed indoors, watching Thai television without understanding a word of it, cleaning the flat. It became a game, a challenge to herself, to find and eliminate patches of dirt. She was starting to acclimatise, but still found herself wanting to clean the whole city when she was out. Why were great heaps of rubbish left to moulder in the streets? When it rained, black water sloshed out of the drains and slurred more dirt across the pavements. It all needed a good scrub, every inch of it. She battled away at the flat, hand-washing curtains and polishing tiles until her body was slick with sweat, and then cleaning herself with equal diligence.
Sometimes faint sounds came through the walls, voices and cries as if from far away. Was Allan fighting with the Thai girl, or were they watching a film? She saw them around the neighbourhood sometimes, in one of the small local restaurants or on their way to the BTS. The girl usually looked sullen, tiny next to the American’s broad shoulders, dressed like a child in little blouses and jewelled slippers. Perhaps she wasn’t just preternaturally young-looking, like most Thai women, but actually thirteen years old.
Later on, when the neighbourhood was quiet, she felt the flat settle into itself. It was soothing, the way you could see every inch of it from the bed. She liked to creep around its perimeter, tracing the walls and furniture with her hands. It was somewhere between a sanctuary and a prison, like an anchorite’s cell. What would it be like to stay here forever? Thailand was such a cheap country that she could feasibly spend a decade here before her savings ran out.
The small pool at the back of the apartment complex turned out to be unusable, scummy with leaves and disuse. Although she was careful not to swallow any of the water, a sour taste lingered in her mouth for hours afterwards, no matter how many times she brushed her teeth. The grounds here were littered with stray cats, scrawny specimens that meowed insolently as she walked past. She wondered if they pissed in the water.
She began jogging at night, after the sun had set and the air turned less stifling. Many of the roads had no pavements, and often no pedestrian crossings either. She picked routes that stayed away from traffic. It felt good, the jolt of her feet on the ground, the last shreds of heat from the day. She sang half-remembered verses of Cantopop songs, happy to be ridiculous with no one nearby to hear. The rhythm of her steps was far too fast for this song. Once she tried Lumphini Park, but it stank with danger after dark, shifty figures in the undergrowth. She went back to the roads.
Every night she pushed herself a little further, and by the end of the second week was penetrating quite far into the estate. Turning a corner, she came up against two of the large feral dogs that roamed the streets. She stopped and they stared at each other. She knew better than to offer her hand, they would not be making friends. Another dog nosed its way out of the undergrowth and came up behind her. She was surrounded now. She should have kept jogging, when she had momentum on her side.
Was she really in danger? There were four of them now, and then five, unmoving, lips pulled back from their teeth. She knew she had to keep her movements calm, but as she stepped down from the curb she stumbled and pitched forward an involuntary couple of steps, and they jerked towards her as a mass. Don’t run, the worst thing you can do is to show your fear. She forced herself to move forward, casually. They kept pace with her, watchful.
It was like a nightmare of wading through soft mud, of weighed-down feet unable to escape from the monster. She made her breath even, tried not to imagine teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her calf, dragging her to the ground where they could finish her off at their leisure. She found herself murmuring his name under her breath, her lover—whispering his name like a talisman, a habit she was trying to wean herself off. As if he could help her now. As if he would notice.
She had moved only a few metres, and wondered how long it would be before they lost patience and lunged. No one knew where she was. Would they be able to identify her body? Afraid of being mugged, she usually kept her pockets empty except for keys. Now she wished she had something, at least her name on a scrap of paper, anything to keep her corpse from being anonymous. She would languish unclaimed in the morgue for weeks, and probably be in a pauper’s grave by the time Sam got round to reporting her missing.
The road was poorly lit, and she navigated it in tight steps, terrified of losing her footing. If she stumbled…but she would not. She would keep her head up, chest forward, confidence holding them at bay. Her feet teetered along the tightrope of street markings, obscured every few feet by puddles. She did not need to look down to know the animals were still there, all around her.
She was so focussed on moving that she did not immediately register the roar of an engine, and then a motorcycle came round the corner and screamed towards them. The dogs scattered before it could hit them, yelping, suddenly like beaten children. For a heartbeat of stillness, she registered their ribs as they fl
ed—literally, turned tail—how thin and mange-ridden their coats were. And then she was running, her heart about to burst, gulping air and not stopping until she could see the lights of the main road.
Pedestrians looked at her curiously as she lurched down Sukhumvit. No one ran here except the farang, foreigners. Her legs bowed with terror and exhaustion but she couldn’t stop, had to keep going, somewhere between a stoop and a stumble. Why had she never noticed before how many strays prowled the streets? The grimy pavement seemed a parade of threats, now her balance was disturbed. Loose paving stones. Food stalls and their woks of boiling oil on shaky charcoal burners. She clutched her elbows to her chest, occupying as little space as possible.
When she got back to her building, Allan and his girlfriend were in the carpark, doling out a gummy mixture of rice and fish from a packet. Around them at least half a dozen cats crouched, gnawing intently as if the food might disappear at any moment.
“Lisa, hey,” called Allan. “Good evening?” She managed to nod, even force a smile. He shrugged at the animals around his feet. “They break your heart, cats,” cuffing one mock-viciously, grinning to show it was a joke. “Still. She loves them.” The girlfriend was making cooing noises and stroking their piebald heads as they ignored her, emitting little grunts and mews as they chewed. Allan looked as if he were ready to go back indoors, but she seemed determined to stay and make sure they finished every scrap.
The flat seemed smaller when Li Hsia stepped inside it, aware for the first time of a faint stale smell. She double-locked the door, shoving the deadbolt firmly home, and checked that the plugs were in place in the sinks and shower. Dashing round the room, she clattered shut the mosquito screens and thick blinds, making sure they covered the whole of the windows, corner to corner. Only then did she realise she had been holding her breath, and let it out in a shaky gasp that rattled in her throat. When she turned out the light, the darkness was total.