Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  A bellboy in a red jacket pulled the creaking accordion gate of the lift shut behind them. On his breast pocket, just under a nametag that said "Lim," the words Historic Station Hotel were embroidered in gold cursive.

  "Going outstation, Madam?" he said to Amma. He grinned at their bags.

  "Yes, going outstation," repeated Amma, adjusting her saree on her shoulder, drawing a little farther into her corner of the lift. When they got out she said under her breath, without turning to look at Uma, "Trying to be funny only this Chinese boy. As if he can't see for himself we're going outstation. What, he thinks we're bringing two three suitcases just to ta-pau our lunch or what?"

  At the Station Hotel's restaurant they sat in wicker chairs on the balcony, amid the elegant remnants of empire: a scuffed and stained checkerboard floor, rolled-up bamboo blinds creaking gently in the breeze, a potted fern wilting genteelly onto the edge of their table. A fine dust coated the ledge under the blinds. Uma, fancy-frocked, sashed-and-stockinged, a thousand pins holding her hair up in a precarious, juvenile bouffant, extended one index finger and—because the dust was dark yet silver, because it was soft and inviting and gave off that quiet, wise dust smell—ran that finger along the balcony ledge, up, up, up towards Amma, over bumps and cracks, leaving a dustless swath in her trailblazing finger's wake. When she could reach no farther she lifted the finger and examined, close up, the whorled fingerprint grooves highlighted by the coating of dust they had acquired. "Only Uma Rajasekharan has these fingerprints," Paati had told her once when she'd run her fingers along a dusty upstairs windowsill at the Big House. And, kissing her dirty fingertips one by one: "Uma alone, Uma and no other. Even your brotherorsister will have different fingerprints."

  But Amma displayed no such enthusiasm for this evidence of an inviolable Umaness-without-end. "Chhi!" she snapped. "There also you must put your hands, is it? Cannot keep quiet ah?" She folded her arms and crossed her legs. "Whatta-whatta grand place this Station Hotel used to be back in the British days, you know or not?" she went on. "Since they took over they've kept it like their face only. Dust everywhere. Taking two hours to come and take our order."

  Now that Amma was expecting a brotherorsister, everything disgusted her even more than before. Her lower lip was permanently curled, at smells, at colors, at hot weather and slow fans and jaunty radio jingles.

  BrotheROARsister, brotheROARsister.

  That was the noise that echoed in the baby's little red ears as it swam around in Amma's belly, fingers and toes splayed like a frog's.

  Three beads of sweat gleamed above Amma's upper lip whenever Uma looked at her. Rashes appeared and disappeared on her skin as Uma watched, and she smelled of fish curry in the mornings.

  Below the railway station balcony, cars constantly pulled into and out of the long driveway. People milled about the kacang puteh stall across the street, buying treats to bring on their trips. A man at the back of the crowd hawked and spat into a nearby flowerbed. "Chhi!" Amma said again and flared her nostrils. "Don't feel like eating also now."

  Nevertheless, when a stingy-whiskered, sniffling waiter came and stood by their table, Amma opened the laminated lunch menu and pondered its columns. Cheese toasties, chicken chop, mutton cutlets. The waiter's coat had seen whiter days; his cuffs were, plainly speaking, grey. Suspicions of stains lingered around the pockets and under the arms, though one couldn't be sure. Perhaps they were shadows or tricks of the light. And one stamp of empire had been permanent: the obsequious curve of the man's shoulders, a half slouch that sent his thin neck bobbling out like a turkey's. "Yes?" he ventured. "You are ready to order, Madam?"

  Amma was: one inche kabin, two freshlime, the first to be pushed aside for being too oily after a single bite, the second to be rejected (with an evocative screwing shut of the eyes and a twisting of the mouth into a tiny pink knot) for being too sour after a single sip. "Don't know what kind of chicken they use these days also," Amma added when she had recovered from her sip of freshlime. "All skin and fat. Enough for me. You also don't drink too much of this terrible freshlime, Uma, otherwise you'll be asking to go to bathroom every two-three minutes. Please."

  A please from Amma was the opposite of a please from Paati. A please from Amma didn't mean that Uma was being a big help.

  Amma paid the bill with exact change, counting out the coins from the embroidered coinpurse she kept in her cream-colored handbag. She clicked the clasp of the handbag shut. Then she got up and took Uma once more by the hand.

  Downstairs on the platform the heat hit them in the face, abloom with all its food smells, its industrial fumes, its faint human odors. Fried bananas from the goreng pisang stall. Thick black grease and fresh paint. Someone's sly, lingering fart. Glossy election posters plastered the walls and columns, their smooth, confident faces and bold letters shining in the sun. vote national alliance for unity and security. democratic action party, protecting your interests. undilah gerakan rakyat Malaysia! On the back of a bench someone had pasted one poster on top of another, and a third person had come along to cover both with a DAP poster, then pasted two more on either side of it for good measure. Under its torn corner the first two layers were still fresh and bright.

  Amma looked at the posters and smiled a sour smile. She opened her handbag and withdrew a small, knotted handkerchief she'd doused in Axe Brand Camphorated Oil. "Oo wah," she said, pressing the handkerchief to her nose and her sweaty temples, "your Appa's cronies are all over the station, man! Whichever way you turn also you see their faces only."

  The train drew in, giving a great metallic shudder at its own whistle. People put their fingers to their ears. "Only twenty minutes late," Amma said. "Almost nothing at all. Too-too efficient our great country is becoming, just like they promised us. Charging into the modern age."

  The inside of the train was all green. Green curtains, green seats, green doors leading to other cars. An antimacassar embroidered with the words Keretapi Tanah Melayu lay delicately on each headrest.

  "What does it mean, Amma?" Uma asked. "Carry-tuppy Tanah Me-lay-oo?"

  "Uma, don't start," snapped Amma. "You know I don't know all that. I didn't study their wonderful Malay language in school. Anyway I think it's something to do with the train only. Nothing so great."

  But someone demurred, someone who wished at least to qualify this dismissive verdict of train only and nothing so great, and at most to ... well, what that someone wanted at most, in the best of all possible worlds, is not yet relevant. Not quite yet. For now he, a Malay man seated across the aisle and behind Uma and Amma, concentrated on correcting certain misconceptions. "Eh thanggachi!" he called out softly, leaning sideways in his seat, his teeth yellow under the black velvet of his songkok. "Thanggachi!"

  Thanggachi meant little sister in Tamil, but Uma, six years old, in stockings and a smocked dress with a sash, knew two things without having to think about them: 1) the Malay man didn't really speak Tamil; and 2) she wasn't anyone's little sister.

  "I'm not thanggachi," she said, and, by way of honest-but-friendly introduction: "I'm Uma Rajasekharan." Only implied, but keenly felt by all present: And who are you, audacious songkok wearer with yellow teeth?

  "Tsk," said Amma, one hand flicking Uma's knee, "don't be rude." She shut her eyes against the green glare streaming through the curtains and leaned against the headrest.

  "Oh oh, so sorry lah thanggachi," said the Malay man, "but I tell you something, okay?"

  Uma blinked at the man. Just above his left eyebrow the velvet of his songkok had worn off to leave a pale, mangy spot.

  "You asking-asking your poor mummy so many questions, I answer for you can or not?"

  A vendor was making his way through the train, his voice barely audible in the distance. "Naaas'lemak naaas'lemak naaas'lemak kari-PAP! Nasi lemak nasi lemak nasi lemak kariPAP!"

  "Keretapi Tanah Melayu means railway lah thanggachi," the man went on. "Means Malay Land Railway. Malay Land that means Malaysia lah, thanggachi, that also you d
on't know ah? Looking at me with eyes so big, your own country also you don't know the name is it? Aiyo-yo thanggachi, your own Na-tio-nal Language also tak tahu ke? No shame ah you, living in Malay Land but cannot speak Malay? Your mummy and daddy also no shame ah, living in Malay Land and never teach their chirren Malay?"

  Malay Land! But this was magical and impossible, a mountainous land for giants and monsters and brave, sarong-clad heroes. Malay Land was like Disneyland or Never-Never Land, not a place where people spat into flowerbeds and farted in crowded railway stations and served too-oily inche kabin. To hear about Malay Land, a land obviously hidden from the naked eye of the uninitiated, might be almost worth forgiving the songkok wearer for saying thanggachi, for appropriating words to which he had no blood-given right and which, moreover, were inaccurate. Perhaps even for his audacious no-shaming, which creased Uma's brow and burned her cheeks. My Appa, she wished to inform the yellow-toothed man, is much cleverer than you, and he can talk proper English, not like you. But one did not say such things to grown-up strangers.

  "Naaas'lemak naaas'lemak naaas'lemak kariPAP!" insisted the vendor, his voice drawing closer and closer.

  "Uma," said Amma, "please stop disturbing the other passengers."

  "But Amma—"

  "Uma. You heard what I said."

  Uma leaned back in her seat and studied the antimacassar in front of her. Across the aisle the Malay man subsided with a sharp chuckle, as if someone had just delivered a terrific punch line. The vendor burst in through the door behind them and bustled through the car, trailing a diaphanous tail of smells behind him. Coconut rice and spicy sambal ikan bilis. Curry puffs made with just enough flour to bind the Planta margarine, and fried in palm oil.

  The man across the aisle bought a packet of nasi lemak and two curry puffs, talking to the vendor in Malay. To Uma, who didn't speak the Na-tio-nal Language, their conversation was impenetrable, but after the vendor moved out of the way she peered around the back of her seat to see what the man had bought. Sedap dimakan. Good to eat. It was one of two phrases in the Na-tio-nal Language she'd learned from an instant-noodle advertisement on TV, the other being cepat di-masak, quick to cook, patently less applicable to the songkok-wearing man's snack. Sedap dimakan. Se dapdi makan. Sedapdima kan. She went over it again and again, ruthlessly tearing apart and putting together syllables, waiting to see if the words would say themselves out loud in her mouth, but they didn't, and she didn't ask Amma to buy her anything. The vendor strode up the aisle and out the green doors into the next car.

  "Naaas'lemak naaas'lemak naaas'lemak kariPAP!"

  Amma unwrapped a cucumber sandwich and handed it to Uma. "Here," she said quietly, "stop staring at other people's food." But the cucumber had turned the thin white bread soggy, and the sandwich wasn't salty enough or buttery enough. Uma fell asleep with it in her hand, and after a few minutes Amma lifted it out of her fingers and threw it into the paper bag she'd brought for rubbish, taking care not to touch the neat C that Uma had bitten out of it.

  AMMA'S SISTER VALLI never turned off the radio in her kitchen. From morn till night it blared its Tamil film songs, interrupted only by the news in English three times a day. Sometimes she left the radio on when she went to bed, and it crackled on like a dying fire into the dawn, after the last news had been read and the last chord of the national anthem had trumpeted through the house. During the day Valli's baby wailed his own slightly more than two cents under and over the solemn news reader, the soaring jingles for Teijin Tetron fabric, and Lata Mangeshkar's mosquito voice. Tears ran down his red face. Gas and fatigue and a fulminating nappy rash drenched his tiny brow in sweat and made his lips tremble. Amma's camphorated handkerchief hadn't left her fist since she and Uma had walked into Valli's kitchen.

  Valli didn't have a maid to keep her kitchen clean: a thin film of oil coated the floor, so that Amma's Japanese slippers slid dangerously on the tiles. The tinfoil Valli had tacked above and around the gas stove had turned black with soot. On each sheet of foil the secret messages of a thousand layers of turmeric-yellow and tomato-red curry were as plain as daylight:

  The times they are a-changing.

  The baby isn't really colicky. He sees the future, that's all.

  Valli's husband misses his mother's cooking.

  In other kitchens people will soon be sharpening their knives, and not because they'll have chickens to carve.

  Valli loves Amma a wee bit less than she did back when she could feel sorry for her.

  "Chhi, what is this, Valli," Amma blurted out on the second day of their visit, overcome by the heat of the stove and the ceaseless radio noises. "At least mop once a week, for goodness' sake. My feet are slipping and sliding all over the place." As soon as she said it she knew what was coming.

  "Sorry lah Akka," Valli said, pouting playfully. "What to do? My husband is only a poor gomen clerk, not a high-fi lawyer. If I had three-four servants my kitchen also would be sparkling clean."

  In the silence that followed, Lata Mangeshkar soared towards her highest note yet.

  Outside in the hot sun, all over the country, people were out voting today. Appa had driven himself to the Party offices after two hours of sleep, giving Mat Din the driver the day off to vote. Mat Din had ridden his bicycle to cast his vote, alone among the servants at the Big House. Lourdesmary the cook, Vellamma the washerwoman, and Letchumi the sweep weren't voting. Lourdesmary didn't think any gomen would move her family out of their cave dwelling and into a house, and Vellamma and Letchumi had been born in India and couldn't vote. "Red IC, saar," they'd said in unison when Appa had offered to give them a lift to the polling station. Letchumi had pulled her red identity card out of her paper-bag handbag and thrust it under Appa's nose.

  "Chari, paruvalai," Appa said, "next time all that will have changed. You vote for my party, new gomen will come, new gomen will change your IC for you. Then next election you can vote."

  "Aaaaaman," Vellamma said to Letchumi as Appa went outside to start the car. "As if. Gomen going to hand out blue ICs left and right. Lawyer-saar dreaming big-big dreams."

  "Even the Indians born and bred in the country they still call foreigners, immigrants, intruders," Letchumi agreed. "You mean to say some new government like magic is going to make us citizens?"

  Amma and Valli hadn't even discussed voting. They'd come downstairs this morning to find the news reader already going onandonandon about the election in his dry monotone. Latest polls. Favored candidates. Estimated turnout according to district. Amma laid the baby on the dining table and began to undress him for his morning oil massage, her arms stretched straight out to reach him in front of her pregnant belly. If she'd been able to bend over or sit or squat or kneel she would've put him on a mat on the floor; because she could only stand he had to have his massage and bath on the table, like a chicken being dressed for the stove.

  "For goodness' sake, Valli," Amma said, "can't you switch that thing off once in a while? Cannot hear myself think also." On the vinyl tablecloth the baby screamed and writhed and waved his clenched fists in the air.

  Valli switched the radio off.

  In his voting booth in Ipoh, Appa put a series of confident check marks in a column of boxes, including one next to his own name. Lawyer-saar still young and hopeful for his young country. Lawyer-saar dreaming, according to Vellamma and Letchumi, big-big useless dreams.

  In another voting booth, five miles down the road from Appa's, Mat Din carefully traced his check marks in different boxes.

  In unseen rooms all over the country, men sat at long tables tallying votes on ballots emptied out of full ballot boxes. These rooms were silent but for a few faint sounds: ceiling fans clicking like tricky joints, papers rustling, dry fingers rasping on paper, tongues licking thumbs. Was it in these rooms that Rumor began her scrabblings? Its nudgings, its sneaky nibblings at the hopeful hearts of men, at their big-big dreams of peace and compromise? Or was it outside on the traffic-choked streets, where its psst-pssts and its p
esky squeaks were at first indistinguishable from the creaking of the unoiled chains on the rattletrap bicycles of Mat Din and a million others like him? Did Rumor steal shamefaced into the wet markets and the kopitiams for her clandestine assignations with Fact? Did Appa, high-fiving his hungry unshaven fellow dreamers as the results were announced, notice them stealing hand in hand past the grimy windows of the Party offices? The day after the election, did Rumor and Fact attend the unofficial victory rallies together in disguise? Did they help to lift Appa onto the shoulders of his rejoicing supporters and then slip away to mourn with the gomen losers?

  Impossible to say, but three days after the election, Rumor and Fact burst forth into the noonday Kuala Lumpur heat, Rumor in a red dress, Fact in coat and tails, and together they began a salacious tango in the streets. Their hair was suspiciously rumpled, their eyelids heavy, their skins slick with sweet afternoon bed-sweat. People pointed and whispered. Schoolchildren leaned out of bus windows and gaped. Good Muslims averted their eyes and wondered what would become of the country if such public immodesty were condoned. But their dance was mesmerizing, and soon crowds—even the good Muslims—began to gather despite themselves. Then Rumor and Fact picked up the pace of their dance, as if somewhere an orchestra played only for their ears. Faster and faster they twirled, Rumor in her red dress, Fact in his coat and tails, until their feet were such a blur that the most intent of the spectators could no longer keep track of whose feet were whose, and people caught their breath as the pair swept past their noses, stirring the air like a speeding car.

  The stories that Rumor and Fact spun together poured like lava through the city: fourteen non-Malay opposition members had been elected in the state of Selangor alone; these Gerakan and Democratic Action Party victors were going to strip the Malays of their God-given scholarships and housing loans and job quotas, overturning Article 153, undoing the social contract, just as they'd been threatening to; Selangor was going to fall to the Chinese, just as Singapore and Penang had fallen before it; the Chinese were going to grab Selangor for themselves, just as they'd grabbed Singapore, as if their pockets weren't bulging enough already; the Chinese were going to force Maoist communism on everyone; the frightened gomen had gunned down a Chinese Labor Party activist for no reason. And the Indians? They'd staged a drunken midnight demonstration, an excuse for a brawl, really, so typical of those bloody booze-guzzling estate coolies. Chinese and Indians, Indians and Chinese: their yellow and brown faces loomed large in the electrified Malay imagination, their gloating laughter, their bloodcurdling cries of victory, their eyes like embers ready for stoking by Malay politicians desperate for scapegoats and simple stories. And every man, Chinese, Indian, and Malay, forgot his contempt for the views of the departed British and savored the taste of his old masters' stereotypes. Coolie, they hissed. Village idiot fed on sambal petai. Slit-eyed pig eater. They'd been given a vocabulary, and now, like all star pupils, they were putting it to use, relying on the old, familiar combinations, patting each other on the back to applaud their own initiative, encouraging the back rows of the classroom to rise to the challenge.