Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  Was it Rumor or Fact that ragged crowds of Indians and Chinese had trailed through Malay settlements with promises and suggestions? Your turn to lick our boots! Talk about ketuanan Melayu, now we'll see who's whose tuan! Kuala Lumpur belongs to the Chinese! Balek Kampong! Go back to your backwater villages. Go home. Go back where you came from. A sarong-clad Pandora with a hibiscus bloom behind one ear opened her box: these words fluttered blackly out, and in no time it ceased to matter whether they had really been spoken or not. They were real and here to stay. They burst into flames; they blazed in plain view and brought tears to unprotected eyes. Anyone could say those words now. A could spit them to B, B to C, and C could turn around and spit them right back to A. Because really, in this country, that go home cry could be directed—delicately or not so delicately—at just about anyone. The people who had (allegedly) said it would have the farthest to travel to get back to where they'd come from.

  As the rioters tore apart the shining capital, Appa and his fellow dreamers shook their heads and buried their faces in their hands.

  "That's racial harmony for you," sneered Lily and Claudine and Nalini. They'd come to the Big House to commiserate with Appa, but faced with his childlike disillusionment had found commiseration beyond them. "Our miracle nation has surpassed herself this time. Goes to show, doesn't it? Even the most well-trained dog will maul the other feller for a bigger piece of meat. Human nature. Nothing we can do about it." And Appa, who would once have quoted Lee Kuan Yew at them, only shook his head some more. "I suppose we won't be seeing you at the club," Lily said.

  They wouldn't, and that sober, sobering night in the deserted Bengal Room was to be their last for a week, for even Lily and Claudine and Nalini would lack the spirit to break the curfew that was to be declared.

  TWO DAYS AFTER the election, Amma noticed the date on Valli's Swami Vivekananda wall calendar and wondered idly how Appa's golden vision had fared, whether his women were fawning over him at the club for some petty victory that would change nothing, or cradling his head in their laps as he drowned his sorrows. But the kitchen radio had not been turned back on since Amma's complaint on Election Day. Who knows? she thought. Who cares? Then she went weightily about her duties, dragging her Japanese slippers on the oily floor, sighing and tsk-tsking to herself while Valli sulked and brooded and the baby wailed.

  Upstairs, in the bedroom she was sharing with Amma, Uma was reading. She'd already been through all the books Amma had packed in her suitcase twice and was now reading them a third time.

  "Consider your verdict," the King said to the jury.

  "Not yet, not yet!" the Rabbit hastily interrupted. "There's a great deal to come before that!"

  "Call the first witness," said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out "First witness!"

  Uma picked a mosquito bite scab off her knee and turned the page.

  At six o'clock Valli's husband, Subru, charged wild-eyed into the kitchen, not stopping to take his shoes off, his panting louder than the baby's fussing. Amma looked up sharply, bouncing the baby in her arms. Valli, who was stirring the evening's dosai batter in the far corner, paused mid-stir and opened her mouth to say something. Two geckos, absorbing the tension in the air, charged at each other and began a noisy, inappropriate fight on the ceiling.

  "There's trouble," Subru said before she could speak. "Going to get even worse it seems."

  "Ennathu?" Valli said irritably. "Running in like a madman and simply-simply talking like this, as if we know what you're talking about? What trouble? Heng Kiat's dogs got into Ranggama's back yard again, is it?"

  "Dogs!" Subru said. "You think I'm talking about dogs and cats and donkeys? Turn on the bloody radio, man, then you'll know what-what terrible things are going on out there. Sitting here staring at each other's faces only, what is going on in your own back yard also how can you know?"

  "No need to shout at me," said Valli. "Akka had a headache, it's because of her only I switched off the radio. Now what?"

  And it was only then, when Valli's husband marched to the radio and switched it on, that the news reader's sharp, clipped voice delivered the turbulence of the outside world to their waiting ears, although it was not yet time for the news: In response to yesterday's victory rallies, about three hundred supporters of the United Malays National Organisation have gathered at the Selangor Chief Minister's official residence to urge him to organize a counterdemonstration...

  But what did they care about demonstrations and counter demonstrations by people with too much time on their hands? "Ithu en-nathu," Valli grumbled, "you think what, you're an Englishman, is it? Walking all over the house in your filthy shoes, and then I only will have to scrub and—"

  "Chumma irru!" Her husband leaned forward on his elbows, his ear up against the radio. "For you shoes and slippers are the whole world, I tell you. Shaddup your mouth and listen."

  The Malay leaders, the news reader went on, have voiced concerns about the tone and content of the Gerakan and DAP rallies earlier today. According to one UMNO official...

  As if he alone shared his father's alarm, the baby took a deep breath, reddening as his lungs filled with air, and screamed with all his might. Under that scarlet scream the reader's voice droned on: Threats ... Kampong Baru neighborhood ... Gerakan ... DAP ... demonstrations... Amma pulled out a chair and sat down suddenly, bouncing the baby so vigorously his scream vibrated in his throat.

  Uma stole down the stairs and sat on the landing. Through the stair rails she watched Amma's hair bun bounce along with the baby in her arms.

  "Enough!" cried Valli. "You think what, I am sitting and shaking my legs all day, is it, like my millionaire sister here? What, you've given me fifteen-sixteen servants, is it, that I can lie in bed and listen to the news all day? Read two different newspapers and keep up with current events? Hank?"

  At the present time, said the radio voice, it appears that Dato Harun has given his permission for a peaceful demonstration.

  "You people," said Amma, "such a small thing also must fight ah? I think I better leave you and go upstairs to see—"

  "Small thing!" Valli threw back her head and, laughing like a car that wouldn't start, upended the bowl of dosai batter over the sink, slopslopslop. "Oh, for you of course it is a small thing, you with your cook driver washerwoman bellboy footman butler, what problems—"

  "Please, for heaven's sake," Valli's husband said. "Both of you please. There is going to be enough fighting out there, no need for us to start our own fight in here. I'm telling you. I heard the Malay fellas talking at the office. Finish for the Chinamen in this country. Finish. The bastards are quietly-quietly sharpening their parangs. Lock the front gate and don't go out tomorrow. I mean it. Don't even step outside the front door."

  "Hanh?" said Amma, pressing the screaming baby against her chest. Over his muffled cries she laughed the high-pitched, wondering laugh of a small child watching a magic trick. "What is sooooo terrible outside there," she said after a moment, "that we cannot even go out to buy a few vegetables from the vegetable van?"

  "I don't think so your vegetable man will be coming tomorrow," said Valli's husband. "If he has anything at all upstairs," he continued, tapping his temple with a forefinger, "he'll sit at home and keep quiet."

  Dato Harun, said the news reader, callously unruffled by all these theatrics—his dosais were crisping nicely on his wife's griddle at home, after all—has reassured the crowd that there is no danger that the state will fall into DAP hands, despite the opposition's claims to the contrary. He has promised to reveal—

  Here, having dumped out the dhal she had soaked for the evening's sambhar, Valli switched off the radio and retrieved her hiccupping baby from Amma. "I can take care of him," she said stiffly. "If you all want dinner you can find something at the Chinese stalls."

  But when her husband came back downstairs, showered and buzzing with Boy Scout be-preparedness, he snorted at the idea of venturing out to the stalls
. "You are deaf on top of everything else, is it?" he said to Valli. "Cannot understand what I said? Or you think I'm joking? There's nothing to joke about. We're not leaving this house tonight."

  So they ate sliced Chinese white bread for dinner, toasted over the flame of Valli's sooty stove and spread with sweet brown kaya. Then they drank coffee (for the adults) and Milo (for Uma) and went upstairs. Amma's belly made a great, dark shadow on the wall beside her bed. BrotheROARsister, brotheROARsister, that shadow growled. One of those was coming soon, its eyes shut tight in concentration, its tiny fists clenched in preparation for battle. The brotheROARsister would be round and red, toothless and flat-nosed, louder and more hiccupy than Valli's baby. Of this Uma was certain.

  VALLI'S HUSBAND had been right: on the following morning, three days after the election, the vegetable man was nowhere to be seen. There was a strange silence, broken only by the thin chirping of sparrows. The pork vendor's robust cry, the crunch-crunch of his cleaver cutting bone, the quack of the vegetable man's squeeze horn, the newspaper boy's thick bundles crashing onto porch after cement porch (narrowly missing dogs cats porch lights grandfathers dozing in creaking rattan chairs): it was as if some celestial conductor held all these parts at bay with a raised hand.

  Valli's husband sat unshaven at the kitchen table, eating more toasted Chinese bread with kaya for breakfast. No one had put the bread away last night after dinner: it had dried out on the kitchen counter and now tasted like sweetened sawdust in his mouth.

  The baby was taking his morning nap, snuffling and whimpering now and then to keep his mother and aunt from slacking off and attending to other, less important matters.

  Valli sat at the table with her chin in her hands and her eyes closed.

  Amma stood at the kitchen window with her arms folded, watching nothing happen.

  Uma was upstairs reading, lying on her cot bed, stomach down, feet in the air, elbows aching from the weight of her head, ears alert because something, somewhere, was amiss, and not just the absent vegetable man and pork vendor and newspaper boy.

  What Valli's husband suspected, Valli could not have cared less about, Amma feared, and Uma and the baby felt in their soft bones: civilization as they knew it was crumbling.

  In Ipoh, Appa and his fellow ex-dreamers had locked up the Party offices and gone home. Appa had barricaded himself in his study with two bottles of whiskey. When Lily and Claudine and Nalini arrived, it was Paati—simultaneously bristling at the indignity, eager to please her son's fine-feathered friends, and disdainful of their un-subtle wares—who went out to open the gate for them. Women these days, she thought as she smiled her greetings at each of them. So much makeup, skirts that practically show their panties, and still cannot get husbands. Throwing themselves at Raju like this, don't they realize he's got better things to do? Out loud she said, "Come in come in, Raju is in his study. Can I get you all a drink?" The servants had not come to the Big House today. Vellamma and Letchumi and Lourdesmary had heard the general advice to stay at home and lock all doors (even the merely metaphorical doors of Lourdesmary's cave dwelling) just in case the trouble spread from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh; Mat Din was hoping it would, so that he might have a chance to join the struggle with his countrymen. He, Mat Din bin Mat Ghani, would gladly answer the first call to arms. He would fight for Malay honor and throw off the yoke of the oppressors; he would never again have to take a lowly job working for a glorified foreigner who talked like he owned this country.

  In settlements all around Kuala Lumpur, other Mat Dins were getting ready for the evening's march, with rag strips and tins of kerosene, with knives and machetes. Permission had been granted for a peaceful demonstration, but no one had expressly forbidden a bit of melodrama here and a smidgen of symbolism there. So the would-be marchers donned white bands of mourning around arm and songkok, nifty accessories that both expressed their wearers' feelings on the outcome of the election and concealed mangy spots on their songkoks. Just as they and their neighbors had found themselves flinging the old British epithets at each other, now they resurrected a symbol they'd first leveled against the white man. Multipurpose mourning white. May be worn whenever the wearer feels his place has been usurped by interlopers and his country overrun by outsiders.

  At four o'clock the city began to shut down. Chinese shop owners pulled the iron grilles over their storefronts with long poles, nervous sweat bathing their bare arms. Government workers cut short their last tea break of the day and hurried home. In the suburbs and outlying areas wives waited for their men by front gates.

  At five o'clock Amma, feeling restive, began to pace around the kitchen on her heavy feet. Valli considered telling her to stop it but didn't.

  By six-thirty the peaceful march had seen its first victims, two Chinese fellows on motor scooters. No one could say what had really happened, or how, or least of all why. Rumor and Fact fornicated openly in the empty streets. The march had taken an inexplicably scenic route through Chinese parts of town. There were words, then blows, then blood, lots of it, and flaming torches for good measure. Someone had produced these last on short notice from God only knew where. Amazing what people could do when they were willing to improvise.

  Money-minded ancestor worshipers! Wipers of bottoms with paper!

  News of the battle spread. Mini-mobs sprouted in magic circles around Chinese cars and scooters, wherever invisible droplets of blood from across the city had sprayed the waiting pavements.

  The wise among the Chinese had summoned reinforcements: uncles in gangs (for those lucky enough to have such uncles), cousins with illegal guns, brothers-in-law who'd acquired valuable experience during the communist insurgency. Now they burst onto the streets as one, shouting unimaginative slogans of their own.

  Balek kampong! Go home to your villages and your paddy fields! We're going to finish off all the Malays! They brandished brooms—an easy, ready symbol, for which house doesn't own a broom?—to illustrate their imminent sweeping-out of the Malays from the city.

  In Valli's kitchen Amma tried, to no avail, to stretch her back and relax.

  Rumor daintily hiked up her red dress, held her dancing shoes in one hand, and waded through the rivers of blood. The march tore down Batu Road as one, like the parts of a prancing Chinese New Year lion. Here was the head, here the lithe waist, here the tail, and the whole thing had somehow, by an enormous concentration of will and coordination, to be kept writhing and dancing in the right direction, devouring screaming children, spitting them out, belching fumes in their parents' faces. Killing and burning and howling the fury it had been saving up since men and women of Paati's generation had shown themselves to be nothing but sycophants of the British, fattening themselves on their filthy colonial system and secretly (or not so secretly) hoping the rulers would stay forever.

  No one but Rumor stopped to remark upon the exaggerated beauty of the scene, the reflection of sunset's bloody colors in the bloody ballet below, the golden light glancing off parang and cleaver and glinting in pools of blood. No artist could have imagined a more lavish union of movement and feeling and sound and smell; in every corner there was something to freeze the senses. The lion roared and shook its terrible head from side to side. Hatred and bloodlust tainted each fresh sorrow. Wails and sobs filled the gaps between war whoops. The earthiness of smoke consorted with the salty sting of spilled blood.

  The brotheROARsister hammered the inside of Amma's belly with its tiny fists, took a deep breath, and dove head-first towards freedom. "Aaaah!" Amma cried out. Valli's eyes sprang open. Her baby stopped whimpering to listen. "Sit down, sit down," Subru said helplessly, his heart shriveling to the size of a chicken liver. Water leaked out of Amma and down her thighs. "Don't tell me," Valli said.

  Amma didn't need to tell her. She doubled over, she grabbed the windowsill, she gasped and turned red in the face. Through a blue haze of pain she saw Uma standing in the doorway, tugging at the hem of her Buster Brown pinafore. She heard Uma's heart flutter in her chest,
ptrr-ptrr-ptrr-ptrr, a fluttering that grew deeper with each breath Uma took, that grew into a thumping, then a thudding, then a gong-boom that drowned out all the other sounds of the living world and forced everyone to move to its beat.

  "Go, go," said Valli at once, shoving her stultified husband out of his seat, "go and find a bloody taxi, man."

  Valli's baby summoned a never-to-be-duplicated super strength and sat up in his cot for three full seconds before toppling backwards. (After this miraculous, sadly unnoticed feat, he was to lag forever behind the average ages for the various developmental milestones listed in the free pamphlet his mother had received from the hospital on the day of his birth.)