Moonrise, Sunset

by Gopal Baratham

  On returning to work on Monday, I went straight to his office. The morning’s Straits Times carried details of the gruesome murders that had taken place in East Coast Park. The photographs of Vanita and the murdered couple, a man called Tay Lip Bin and his fiancée Esther Wong, contained in their identity cards, had been blown up and adorned the front page. The report included the fact that the girl Vanita Sundram had a male companion who had been detained for questioning but had been subsequently released. Everyone at Nats would guess who this was and I would face a barrage of questions, condolences, warnings and large doses of advice I did not need. I felt that Symons, being the good manager he was, would tell me how to deal with the situation.

  He was studying the Straits Times when I entered his office. He folded this neatly and placed it under a paperweight before looking up at me. His face was expressionless.

  “I knew something like this would happen. I had a feeling. As you people say these days, I had bad vibes about that girl.”

  “I don’t understand. You felt that Vanita would be murdered?”

  “Oh, I didn’t know she would be murdered. I simply had an uneasy feeling about her. There was an aura of violence about that girl. I did my best to tell you that but you simply didn’t want to know.” He smiled, reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “I supposed it would take you time to realise what you really are. I can assure you that, the world being as it is, it takes the likes of us a while to know our true natures. There is nothing wrong with experimenting a bit, I suppose, and I’m sure you’ve now come to your senses.”

  I was genuinely puzzled. “I don’t get what you’re talking about?”

  “About you, and what you really are, HK.” However much I protested, I couldn’t stop Symons from calling me by my initials.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, HK, you. You’re one of us, no matter how hard you try to deny it, no matter how much you try to make it on the other side. I knew this as soon as I set eyes on you years ago, just as I knew that you would take time accepting your real self.” He smiled beatifically and squeezed my hand. “The girl’s death was a blessing, an undisguised blessing. You are free, HK, and your eyes have been opened.”

  “You pitiable old pervert,” I shouted. “What makes you imagine that, even if I was as bent as a hairpin, I would think of going with an old fart like you?” I pulled my chair back so I was out of his reach. I was revolted at the thought of being touched by the man, even in friendliness. What had happened nine years ago came to mind and the memory was so fresh that I could smell semen on draughtsman’s paper. “I came to tell you, Symons, that the girl I love, that I was about to marry, has been murdered. I wanted your sympathy, your advice on what I should do to make things easier at the office, and you grab the opportunity to make a pass at me.” I stood up. “I’d better get out before I throw up.”

  “Think carefully on what I have said then…”

  I stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind me.

  Just outside Symons’ room was the staff toilet. I locked myself in one of the cubicles and sat on a seat. My face was hot and my heart pounded uncomfortably. I felt strangely guilty, wondered why I had been so accommodating to Symons at our first meeting, why I had not responded to his advances with anger the way a normal man would. I couldn’t understand why I had been playful, almost coquettish, towards the ghastly man these past nine years. Then, in the silence of the staff toilet, I thought I began to see what Symons had been getting at.

  I had read in one of Ma’s women’s magazines of homosexuals who denied their true nature. “Closet gays”, the writer had called them. These unfortunates had, in their need to prove their maleness, even married and had children only to discover tragically and too late what they really were.

  I had been disgusted by the episode with Symons, but initial revulsion was, the writer of the article maintained, a common feature of the closet gay syndrome. Even my attraction to Vanita pointed towards it. Closet gays were occasionally attracted to women. These women tended to be large, hairy and smelled like men. Vanita was all of this while I was hairless and delicate, attractive to my own sex. Could our relationship have been more than the simple attraction of opposites?

  I had just about persuaded myself that I was homosexual when someone entered the cubicle beside mine. The bottom half of the wall separating us was cut away and I could see the man’s feet pointing towards the bowl. I waited but there was no splash of urine. Then I heard the rhythmic whispering of flesh rubbing on flesh. The man was masturbating. To my horror I found that I was terribly excited, waiting, all attention, for the slapping noises that would precede his climax. I was indeed gay, for who but a homosexual would be turned on by the thought of a man masturbating. I might as well admit this to myself and, for that matter, to Symons.

  Something stopped me from doing so. Something that gave me great relief. My being homosexual did not somehow fit into the way that the world was shaped for me. What was an even greater relief was that, with my excitement running high, it was Vanita that I thought of, not the man masturbating on the other side of the wall. I needed to sink my face into her breasts, find release in her body.

  I closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt her in the cubicle. I kept my eyes closed and breathed in deeply. Over the deodorants and disinfectants I could smell her smell. She was alive and well and with me. It had all been part of a nightmare. The blood, the policemen, D’Cruz, the room marked SIR.

  I stood up and reached out for her. My arms passed through empty air. I opened my eyes. I was alone, foolishly waving my arms about in a toilet cubicle. Then, and I think really for the first time, a deep sense of loss struck me. I began to cry, at first tentatively then in uncontrollable sobs. Finally I gave up all restraint and howled. When I calmed down, I washed my face and ran a comb through my hair. I was ready to face the rest of the staff at Nats.

  Like many modern offices, mine is a small glass box. To secure some kind of privacy, I had plastered the walls with large calendars and posters. As soon as I got in, I took off my joggers and slipped on light rubber boots. I was buttoning the white doctor’s coat that I use at work when Loong entered.

  Loong’s full name is Loong Wan Suay but I have never heard anyone call him anything but Loong. Even his wife, a spindly creature with pimples and hairy legs, calls him by his surname. I guess this is because they are a traditional Chinese couple. Traditional Chinese couples are allowed to ignore or insult each other in public, but any display of intimacy or demonstration of affection is proscribed. Adhering to such a tradition makes it possible for them to see the red and dark skinned devils who publicly kiss and cuddle as separate from themselves. It also serves to keep them distant from each other which Oscar said was the essential requirement for preserving racial unity.

  Loong, an energetic man with brisk movements, spoke in clipped sentences which resembled the spiky hair that stood to attention on his head. His short arms were muscular and, from rough skin, strong black hairs sprouted. Some people considered him handsome. I didn’t. I hated the man. He was my immediate boss and, what was worse, had been Vanita’s lover immediately before me.

  “Very sad, Miss Sundram’s death,” he said. “But must not be allowed to affect smooth running of office.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied, picking up the schedule on my desk.

  He held up a hand. “Routine jobs later,” he snapped.

  “Problem has risen in meat preparation area. One sluice blocked and whole zone in danger of contamination.”

  Contamination is a word that galvanised the normally lackadaisical staff at Nats. If airline passengers complained of upset stomachs, and if this could be in any way attributed to the food originating in our kitchens, Nats would lose a contract. A lost contract would automatically lead to a decrease in our annual bonus.

  I finished buttoning my white overall and said, “I’ll look into it right away.”

  “Wait,” he said, touching my sleeve. “W
ere you the man papers say was with Miss … with Vanita when she was killed?”

  “Yes,” I replied, brushing away his hand.

  “What you say to police? What did police do after girl die?”

  Loong wasn’t the kind of person to be particularly concerned about police brutality. But he wasn’t the kind of man who indulged in idle curiosity either. He was threatened in some way by Vanita’s death and afraid as to what I had revealed to the police. I decided to play on his fear.

  “I told the police whatever I knew about Vanita.”

  “You knew about me … and the Sundram girl, yes?”

  I had for something like a year tried to get used to the idea of Loong and Vanita being lovers but the thought still caused me pain. “Yes … Vanita told me.”

  “And you told police, no?”

  I hesitated. I did not think that the affair had anything to do with the murder. It had, after all, been over for a year. But I disliked the man sufficiently to want to keep him on tenterhooks. “I talked a lot. I don’t remember exactly what I told the police.” I paused. “Anyway, you have nothing to be worried about. Whatever went on between you and Vanita was over a year ago, wasn’t it?”

  He hung his head then looked at me over the side of his shoulder. “No action going on for a long time but my wife, Mrs Loong, know nothing about happenings in office.” A prim smile touched his face. “I am traditional Chinese, Menon. I don’t bring dirt from outside into family home.”

  I had an enormous urge to hit the man. I didn’t. Loong was expert in various martial arts and was forever holding forth on the merits of taekwondo over karate or vice versa. Remembering this made my impulse to violence easier to control. I swallowed a few times then asked, “Did your wife not guess what was going on?”

  “Mrs Loong no waste time guessing. I, head of household, make sure that wife no lose face. Harmony of home is preserved. Face and harmony are most important factors in Chinese family life.” He allowed himself a little smile. “You English-educated say, what? ‘Ignorance is bliss’, yes?”

  “So you are quite happy to deceive her?”

  “You look like Chinese, Menon, but you not Chinese, so you not understand.”

  “What don’t I understand, Loong?”

  “Concept of face, Menon. Need for maintaining appearances and propriety.” He smiled. Nostrils flared, eyes half-closed in disdain. “You just like Sundram girl. Talk too much. She open mouth wide like she open everything. Sometime I worry Mrs Loong finding out, sometime…”

  A thought struck me. “What would happen if Mrs Loong did find out about you and Vanita?”

  “Oh, disgrace. Loss of family honour. Sure divorce. Maybe suicide even. Future prospects of children all lost.”

  I remembered Loong’s two sons. Ugly like their mother and, judging by their behaviour at staff parties, horrors in every sense of the word. Like most such children, they had the unconditional affection of their parents.

  “So Mrs Loong didn’t know anything about the affair?”

  He shook his head. “No. Nor about other matters connected with Sundram girl.”

  “Other matters?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “You not listen to office chitchat?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes I let it go in one ear…”

  “I arrange for Miss Sundram to do continuous night shift two years ago. This give her night allowance and two days off per week.”

  “Why on earth should Vanita want to work…?” I knew the answer before I completed my question. Working nights meant that she was free to spend her afternoons with Loong who, I was sure, would be hard pressed to find reasons to leave honourable family home after dark.

  I bit my lip and swallowed hard. At some time I would have to find a way of coming to terms with these ugly memories: memories of Vanita with Loong, of her with lovers before him. I would have to be able to look at them without balking. To rid them of their sting, I would have to incorporate them into the way I saw the world.

  This, however, was not the time for that kind of an exercise.

  There was something that Loong had said, a word he had used which didn’t seem quite right. It took me several moments to realise what this was.

  Loong had mentioned “other matters” connected with the “Sundram girl” but had only mentioned one.

  “So getting Vanita to work a continuous night shift was not the only thing you arranged for her?”

  The supervisor’s manner changed abruptly. “No time for wasting any more,” he snapped. “Problem has arisen in meat preparation area. Health inspector must inspect urgently and take necessary action to rectify situation.” He bustled out of the room.

  Nothing seemed to have changed in the packaging hall where meals were put together. The women, called “preset girls” irrespective of their age, sat close together in neat rows and placed items of food into preset compartments of the plastic trays that moved on belts in front of them. Vanita had been a preset girl. Like them she had worn a long-sleeved, white coat over her dress and enclosed her hair in a paper cap to protect the food from contamination. I shuddered when I noticed the outsize plastic gloves the girls had on.

  I rushed through the packaging hall and into the smaller room where meat was prepared. I hoped to God that Mary would not be on duty that morning.

  She was.

  Mary Magdalene Lourdes was a tall girl with poppy eyes and pimples. She managed to be ill-proportioned without being fat or thin. This was obvious even though she had on her standard white coat. The fact that she was unattractive did not stop Mary from behaving as though she was forever in a beauty contest. She preened herself whenever she passed a reflecting surface, pirouetted rather than walked across a room and was constantly shooting glances at men who, in her eyes, were the judges of the contest in which she was unendingly engaged.

  Mary was ostentatiously religious, attending mass every day and twice on certain saints’ days. There is no contradiction between religiosity and vanity. They may, in fact, be part of the same phenomenon.

  I once heard Mary telling one of the preset girls, “God wants us to look after our appearance just as He wants us to stay pure down below for as long as possible.”

  None of us guessed how serious she was about the last part of her statement till she married Dominic Jeyaraj, a timid-looking boy whom Loong put in the meat preparation section the day he joined Nats. He was, by virtue of the fact that he was Tamil and a Catholic, regarded by Mary as a suitable husband. That he looked innocent and seemed of an undemanding disposition increased his desirability.

  Within a week she had announced their engagement. They were married in a grand church ceremony two months later. Office gossip had it that the marriage was unconsummated. The chaste way in which they held hands at work, called each other “dearest” in public, and the look of increasing tension on Dom’s face, suggested that the gossip was correct.

  All doubt was removed when Dom ran away with a pretty preset girl called Mee Li.

  Mary Magdalene Lourdes announced, as soon as her husband’s defection became known, that she had kept herself pure till she was sure of the sort of man Dom really was. She did not see that this was exactly what had caused him to leave her. Quite the contrary. She maintained that Dom’s behaviour vindicated her unwillingnesss to consummate the marriage.

  “He was only interested in one thing, and thank God I didn’t give it to him. I can still give my purity to a better man.”

  Unfortunately, I was the better man she had in mind and she repeatedly informed me that “… nothing has been touched in my body and you will find me exactly as God made me.”

  When Vanita came into the picture, Mary’s advances became less obvious but only slightly less so.

  When I entered the meat preparation room that morning, Mary was sticking a skewer into a chunk of partly cooked meat. She withdrew the metal after a few seconds, smelled it and placed it against her tongue.

  “Not quite fresh tho
ugh the cooking temperature seems right.” She put down the skewer, brushed her hair with the back of her hand and looked at me, her head at an angle.

  “Loong tells me that you have a problem here, Mary.”

  She nodded and indicated the corner of the room where water was beginning to pool.

  “A blocked sluice. Have you called plumbing?”

  She laughed and said, “Look more closely, How Kum.” I did and saw that the grilled outlet of the sluice had been stuffed with toilet paper.

  “You did that, Mary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To get you over here. We can see more of each other now that the Jezebel is out of the way.”

  She stuck the skewer into the chunk of meat and began twisting it around. “I read the papers this morning and was glad.” She looked heavenwards. “Forgive me, oh Lord.” Then she smiled to herself. “I wonder who the man was. The man the papers said she was with when she was struck down in the act of fornication?” She shot me a cunning look. “How Kum, it was you?”

  In my better moments I would have appreciated the pun, unintentional though it was, but now it hardly registered. “I know, I know. She took you to East Coast Park? To the grassy patch by the tree beside the jogging track?”

  “How do you know where Vanita went with me? How do you know the exact spot?”

  “Detective work.” She touched her nose. “I followed her a few times. She went there with everybody, you know. Not just you.” Her mouth twisted bitterly.

  I felt a stab of pain at the thought of Vanita spending nights in East Coast Park with others; spending nights in the place from which we listened to the sea, heard songs from a distant world and watched the moon rise.