by Julie Koh
‘Success is within reach,’ declared the President at sunset, despite all evidence to the contrary. But he was struck immediately by an incredible yawn. The rest of us fell about yawning sympathetically and were all soon in a pile, fast asleep, in the midst of a lullaby.
(D)
Dawn lit up the thousands of gramophones we had placed at regular intervals around the chalk circle.
We had mustered the village’s entire supply of music-playing devices.
This was possible due to the villagers’ complete support of our new strategy. To them, the sound of a French horn was a threat. They liked only the sounds with which they were familiar. The village butcher was in charge of maintaining a centralised list of favoured sounds, which he kept for public viewing in a small ledger in the community hall.
Among the sounds with solid followings in the village were those of:
forms of transport, such as tractors; and
beer gushing from the tap in the local pub.
We began the siege at seven o’clock in the morning, confident that the gramophones would deafen our opponents and render them unable to prepare new accompaniments for combat. The din was almost unbearable but we persisted. After all, we were striking at the heart of the orchestra’s tactics.
By lunchtime, however, the villagers were cursing the very invention of the gramophone. They filed an official request that we rid them forever of their musical devices.
Once our gramophonic inferno had subsided to a slow burn, the orchestra returned fire with a rendition of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.
(E)
Equipment dwindling, we started to create more effective ammunition. Our key strategy was to compose scathing reviews of the orchestra and nail them to the trees at the outskirts of the woods. The reviews contained remarks such as:
These people are testament to the fact that just because you can count to twelve doesn’t mean you should play an instrument.
And:
Attending a performance by this lot is worse than listening to a site of builders drilling and farting.
Then the President of the Committee picked up a loudspeaker and repeated for an entire day and night the bullet points set out on a piece of paper he had prepared earlier. The document contained the following assertions:
Musicians are failed professionals.
A real musician never hides behind an orchestra.
We are concerned that some of you are experiencing depressive tendencies because your lives are useless.
We note that today is Are You Coping Day and we are wondering if You Are Coping. You may wish to avail yourself of a number of brochures on mental health that are currently in our possession.
A bassoonist, long plagued with guilt about his membership of the group, gave himself up. The second he crossed the chalk line we swaddled him in blankets and took him to the nearest accounting firm, where he was put in a sharp suit and tie and placed in the next Excellerate intake.
(F)
For immunity and a favourable salary package, the bassoonist had marked on our map the locations of the pits where the rest of the orchestra was hiding.
We donned noise-cancelling earmuffs and fanned out. Our priority was to pick off the double bass players: even with their instruments strapped to their backs, they moved slower than the rest.
We sawed our trophy instruments into pieces and added them to the gramophones, listening to their dying melodic crackle as we warmed our hands against the fire.
(G)
Gradually, we hunted the orchestra down to a chamber orchestra. Then a quintet. A quartet. A trio, then a duo.
In the end, just one musician was left. A member of the second violins.
We circled him in a clearing. There was now a chalk circle surrounding the woods and a concentric human circle at its heart.
The violinist wore an open shirt and a gold medallion that nestled on his white chest hair. We disliked his flamboyant dress sense and his insufferable attitude.
‘So what?’ he said. ‘I will be a great soloist.’
We broke his violin against a tree.
‘So I will sing,’ he said.
We cut off his ears.
‘So I have perfect pitch.’
We took out his voice box.
He started to conduct in 3/4 time.
We severed his arms.
He tried to dance a jig.
We crushed his legs and strung him up by the neck with his violin strings.
Results
Recalling the old woman’s warning, the President of the Committee ordered us to turn away from the scene after our work was done. But the nervous young Committee member, whose question had been lost to the wind, climbed a ladder so he could look into the violinist’s eyes.
We heard the young man begin to cry.
Then we heard a shot.
He had put the barrel of his gun into his own mouth.
I retreated from the woods wearing my earmuffs.
I could not listen to the silence.
Conclusion
A week later, we cut down the corpse of the violinist and gave it a funeral, which we had decided was the right thing to do in so tragic a situation as this. We even imported the sister from a neighbouring village for the occasion.
Upon our strong suggestion, the woman lamented to the congregation the day her brother had first picked up the violin, as the instrument had been the direct cause of his death.
Prior to the burial, we were inundated with letters from members of the public requesting a funeral march, which they thought appropriate to commemorate their grief upon the unfortunate death of the violinist. We were unable to meet these requests as we had exhausted the village’s supply of gramophones and instrumentalists. We planned to substitute the funeral march with a choral work but realised during the procession that none of the Review Committee members knew how to sing.
The debacle drew the infinite anger of the public. In response to our disrespectful conduct, every one of their initial requests for a review of the woods was withdrawn and alternative requests issued.
We question the necessity of the most recent goings-on in the woods, said one letter, in light of the almost total massacre last year of a troupe of ink and wash artists in exile from China, who were, in fact, those responsible for painting the woods into existence with the intention of providing the villagers with a space for spiritual escape.
The alternative requests demanded to know how the eradication of the Russian orchestra had occurred, which is the subject of the present inquiry.
Recommendation
We are at pains to emphasise that the key figures responsible for the recent goings-on in the woods must be brought to justice.
Our suspicions as to their continued existence are based on investigations into a further request from a villager still uncomfortable with the way the woods have been making him feel.
I hear a pounding at night, he complains, like someone is galloping through the undergrowth. But when I look, I can’t see anyone.
Testimonials have confirmed sightings of a black ink horse moving in sync with a galloping bass drum, under the combined spell of a master brush and a master baton.
The Procession
The three-year-old is sucking on a lollipop.
He’s the size of a fully-grown man. His hair is shaved up the sides, culminating in a topknot tied with a big red bow. He’s dressed in his best yellow silk robes, which have been embroidered with elaborate green dragons and red tractors.
The three-year-old wants to be at the head of the birthday procession. The other gods aren’t so sure. After all, it isn’t his birthday, it’s someone else’s. The gods mutter among themselves in their strange, high-pitched language.
Finally, they give in.
The drumming starts. Gongs sound. Cymbals clash. Whistles thrill the air.
The three-year-old cracks his whip and takes the lead. He skips forth, arms pumping, leading the parade of birthday floats
with their blinking lights down the dark, muggy streets of Klang.
Fat gods and thin gods, tall gods and short. Each walks behind a neon float, followed by an entourage.
Along comes the God of Lost Things. His float is a ute piled high with bric-a-brac. Abandoned children sit among the junk, smiling and clapping, their feet hanging off the back of the vehicle. They laugh and point at the Goddess of Old Maids, who charges ahead in a white veil and dress, looking as if she has come straight from the altar.
Wandering after her is the Immortal Priestess of Mild, Moderate and Gross Injustices. She seems lost, wearing a blindfold and carrying a set of digital scales she can’t read.
The monkey god flips forward and back, light as air.
The tiger god lopes along, growling. Now and then he claws at the scratching post installed at the back of his float.
‘There,’ says Ben. He points to a float at the rear of the procession. ‘That’s the one I’m here to see. They call him the Economist.’
The Economist is a serious-looking guy with a boring haircut. Like Ben, he’s wearing a suit.
‘He seems ordinary,’ I say.
Ben shakes his head. ‘You’re pretty but so naïve. If the most powerful god in the world knocked on your door and sat down at your kitchen table, you wouldn’t even realise.’
I fold my arms and stare at my bare feet. Ben never lets me into this car unless I take off my sandals. This car is his beloved. It’s a souped-up white BMW with black rims and doors that open vertically.
We’re parked on the side of the street, watching the parade. Ben has driven us here straight after work, rap songs about bitches and hoes blaring from the car’s audio system. He’s adjusted the bass so it’s as loud as possible – it thumps right through the chest.
The whole way over here, Ben kept boasting about the latest multi-million-dollar deal he’s closed at the bank, and how, going forward, he’s going to upgrade to a new matt-black BMW. He’ll upgrade once he marries me, he decides out loud.
He says he deserves it.
I curl up against the car window and watch the parade more closely. I want to find something that can distract me from Ben’s voice, which is now lecturing me about the fact that marriage is a beautiful invention, created so that a man and a woman can pool financial resources and buy property together.
A small dog, white with light brown patches, darts through the crowd. Captivated, I watch its tiny zigzag until it disappears from view.
The Economist’s entourage is much longer than all the other entourages put together. It goes on for blocks. His float is a stretch limousine with a screen mounted on top, displaying a slideshow populated with ever-shifting graphs that track share prices and interest rates rising and falling in real time.
An old man is at the front of the entourage begging the Economist for a forecast.
‘He’s a finance minister,’ Ben explains.
The Economist walks along with his eyes rolled into the back of his head. An assistant hurries after him with a parasol, as if shielding the Economist from some unknown danger.
Through a megaphone, the Economist speaks of the endless good works of the Invisible Hand, the all-knowing power of the Market.
He takes a sword from another assistant and draws the blade across his tongue. He lets the blood drip onto the tip of a paintbrush, then uses it to write a forecast for the minister on yellow paper.
Once it’s done, he turns to his entourage. He sticks out his tongue.
The cut has healed. Everyone gasps.
At the very end of the procession is a sweaty, potbellied man in a brown patchwork coat. The coat hangs loose at the neckline, leaving one nipple exposed. The man clutches a fan in one hand and a gourd-shaped bottle in the other. He stumbles along, barefoot and giggling, his eyes half-closed.
‘Look at that drunk shit,’ says Ben. ‘Probably homeless.’
The drunk turns to look at us, as if he has heard. He cocks his head and smiles. Pendulums of saliva stretch from his mouth. Swaying, he takes a red carnation from inside his coat and beckons us with it.
Ben sniggers. ‘Be still my beating heart.’
I look at Ben, then at the drunk.
I unlock the car door.
‘What are you doing?’ says Ben.
The heat of the night envelops me. My feet swing out and touch the bitumen.
‘Are you nuts? What about your shoes?’
I hurry over to the drunk. He takes a swig from his gourd then sprays the mouthful of liquid into the air. A fine mist descends.
He proffers the gourd to me. I decline, smiling.
I fall into line behind him. He walks with his feet turned out, taking steps in complicated patterns as if following the rules of some private dance.
Ben starts the car and begins to trail us, bringing up the rear of the procession.
The Economist continues to preach through the megaphone. To demonstrate a point, he calls the three-year-old over and snatches the lollipop from the child’s mouth.
He snaps his fingers. The lollipop shoots into the air and multiplies. Thousands of lollipops rain down over the crowd. People crawl over each other to get at the sweets. They scratch and slap. They tear out each other’s hair.
In the stampede, a woman screams.
‘Oh! The dog! The poor little dog!’
The back of the procession halts.
The drunk pushes through the crowd and stumbles in the direction of the woman’s voice. I follow.
Arriving at the spot, we discover the little brown and white dog lying sprawled on the ground. There isn’t any blood but its body has been completely crushed, trampled by the crowd.
‘Who owns this animal?’ asks the Economist of the crowd. He points at the limp, broken body.
The dog looks up at me, its eyes full of shock.
The drunk crouches over the dog and wipes its tears away. He strokes its matted hair. He comforts it with gentle, unintelligible words. He plants a kiss on its head, picks it up, tucks it under one arm, and proceeds past the Economist’s float.
The brawl resumes.
Having returned to the head of the procession, the three-year-old takes a sudden turn into a wire-fenced parking lot.
Although he has lost his lollipop, he has somehow gained a replacement dummy.
Sucking happily on his new acquisition, he skips across the vacant lot towards the back fence, accelerating.
As he nears the fence, he steps up into the air.
The procession follows, moving along an invisible plane that extends over the fence and above the palm trees.
The drunk does the same.
I hesitate.
Ben’s voice calls out. It booms. He seems to have wangled a megaphone from someone in the parade.
‘Lex, are you getting a lift back, or what?’
The drunk looks down at me and grins.
‘Birthday,’ he trills. ‘Mine. Come to party?’
The dog yaps and wags its tail.
I smile.
I step forward and up.
Above the trees, I look back at the Economist’s float. The driver revs the engine. The float speeds full tilt towards the fence.
It crashes through.
The crowd heaves around it, still fighting.
I spot Ben hanging out the window of his car, peering up at me. The car is stuck behind the float, unable to move – a white speck in the raging crush.
I laugh.
I’ll never have to sit in that souped-up piece of junk again.
I wave to my shoes and send them a farewell kiss.
I swing my arms. The drums roll.
Stepping up above the city, we march on.
The Sister Company
Orla had been doing well in the session up until the point where the young Thai masseuse who called herself Rabbit asked her to sit up and cross her legs.
Orla did as she was told. Rabbit squatted behind her and began digging her elbow into the back of Orla’s sho
ulder. Orla held the towel over her breasts with one hand, and bowed her head. That’s when she began to cry. The tears dripped right into her lap.
Rabbit stopped. ‘I make you hurt?’
‘It’s not you,’ said Orla. ‘Just another bad day.’
‘I go on?’ said Rabbit.
Orla wiped the tears from her eyes, nodding. She concentrated on the sound of the bamboo flute filtering through the room. Rabbit pushed her knees against Orla’s back and placed her hands on either side of Orla’s jaw. She stretched Orla’s head up and back, making her spine arch. She finished by clapping her hands all over Orla’s back.
‘Done,’ she said.
She slipped out and slid the door closed.
Orla felt dizzy as she got off the table. Her body smelled like massage oil and Tiger Balm. The room didn’t have a mirror but Orla knew her hair was all messed up. She pulled out the elastic and tried to flatten the stray strands as best she could. She also knew there’d be an embarrassing towel imprint on her chin and cheeks but there was nothing she could do about that.
Out in the waiting room, Rabbit had made a cup of green tea for her to drink.
Underneath the cup was a business card.
‘For you,’ said Rabbit.
The card was thick and white, bearing capital letters embossed in blue.
THE SISTER COMPANY, it said. THERAPY, LIFE COACHING & COMPANIONSHIP FOR THE MELANCHOLIC.
Below the capital letters was a phone number.
*
In the days following the massage, Orla had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. It didn’t help that the sky had been dark for three weeks of summer thunderstorms, with no end in sight.
She still managed to get to work on time each day. It was standing room only on the train. She swayed with the rest of the passengers, one hand gripping the nearest pole, and the other thrust into her trouser pocket, fingertips pressing against the corners of the business card that Rabbit had given her.