Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  Cheok raises two red cellophane bags of food and a hot pot. “I knew you’ll forget.”

  Landon slaps his head. An appointment missed is as good as a promise broken. He steps aside to allow Cheok passage. “I’m sorry, there’s a lot going on and—”

  Cheok shoulders past his explanation and steps into the living room with a jaunty gait. He clears a space on the teak coffee table and lays out the food sealed in shrink-wrap. “You got stock cubes?”

  “In the fridge. Tray on the right.”

  Cheok carries the empty hot pot to the kitchen.

  It is ten o’clock by the time the lid comes off steaming. Cheok slides the vegetables into the broth and turns it into a picture-perfect bubbling stew of cabbages, radishes, leeks, mushrooms and carrots. Landon picks at a plate heaped full of raw pork and liver, blanches them in broth and dips them in a vinegary garlic sauce.

  Cheok passes him a bowl of boiled quail eggs. “You got wine?”

  “I though you brought beer?”

  “Saving it for the match.”

  Landon shreds broiled beef between his molars. “A nice 2010 Andrew Lane merlot.”

  “French ah?”

  “Only the name of the grape,” Landon, still chewing, now poaches shrimps with a slotted spoon. “It’s Napa Valley.”

  “Somewhere in France ah?”

  “You want it or not?”

  “Any wine is good.”

  Landon fetches the bottle, uncorks it and pours the merlot into tin cups. They drink, sloshing the liquid on their palates and guzzling it down. Cheok gives an approving belch, his breath rich with alcohol and tannins.

  On an antiquated redwood shelf the TV rambles on about a race around Pusan between feisty young girls and a group of elderly men. Landon zaps it with the remote. News. A serialised soap opera with a crawling plot. A documentary about people in rural China who migrated to cities and worked themselves to death.

  Cheok looks sidelong at him. “The game’s not on for another hour. Poker? One dollar per bet.”

  “How’s your missus?”

  “Alzheimer loh. The usual: whole day just mumble to herself. I think putting her in a home is better. She’s happier when I’m not around.”

  “You’ll miss her.”

  “I visit you every day, loh.” Cheok sneers. “Better still, I move in.”

  Landon reaches over with the bottle and tops up Cheok’s mug. “Somehow I get the feeling I’m running a shelter for the old and grouchy.” “You are.”

  “Maybe I should consider running one for real.”

  “With your memory?” Cheok raises his voice in mock derision. “You will starve me to death and smell my rotting body and think it’s the garbage.”

  Landon laughs. Cheok responds with a look of indifference that makes him laugh even more. From another cellophane bag, Cheok fishes out a bunch of golf ball-sized fruits with red leathery husks. “Lychee?”

  “Okay.”

  Above them the ceiling fan whirs and creaks, punctuated by the crack of lychee husks and the occasional squeak when Cheok sucks out the pit. When it is time for the match Landon zaps the TV and the festive rumpus of spectator chants and drums fills the living room. Cheok goes to the kitchen and returns with the six-pack.

  “Tonight you akan mati lah, my friend,” he says with an evil grin.

  “Cheok, just watch the match.”

  6

  SOMETHING SANE

  WHAT MAKES A dying child happy? Stories? Games? Companionship? Clara has done enough to know that toys won’t do since the children don’t own them for very long. So this week she has a Jenga set. Anything that’s good for the brain and muscles and would help Pansy with her HIV-induced lipodystrophy. Pansy would only be borrowing them. She likes that notion because it has a glow of optimism to it—that she’ll see Clara again next week and the week after.

  The lobby of the hospice is all plaster and paint, but it has a lofty ceiling that lets in the light and breeze. It’s the spot where you get to see contingents of wheelchairs passing, laden with the old and the young. Clara watches them. She has waited an hour for the director but she doesn’t mind.

  Ten minutes later, a genial matron with curly white locks and a smiling gaze that never falters steps out of the elevator and ambles towards her. She is dressed in grey and wears black pumps.

  “Director.” Clara extends her hand, her smile fresh as ever, enlivened by the infectious warmth of the matron’s presence.

  The Director puts a hand to her heart. “Please, call me sister, or aunty if you would.”

  “Aunty Ratnam, I’m Clara.”

  “I figured,” she says. “I feel so bad to have kept you. But I insist on meeting every donor and partnering guardian.”

  “Well, I’m very humbled.”

  “A full year’s expenses is a lot of money.” Aunty Ratnam touches her arm and leads her on a gentle stroll. “I’d like to know what inspired you to this.”

  To redeem a great and unpardonable sin, Clara would’ve blurted if she was huddled inside a confession box. She has selected eight hospices, homes and sanctuaries, and five years of sponsorship accorded to each would give her forty years of sanity—if the institutions lasted the decades. And they would. Every generation has its share of the unfortunate and afflicted. Forty years. She would have switched identities twice by then.

  “I can’t have children and I’d like some of my own—to love.” Clara says. “And I thought, where else better than to love in a place where it’s needed most?”

  They pass a manicured garden with pavers and ornamental boulders. There Aunty Ratnam beams like the sun. “You put it across very beautifully.”

  “It’s true.”

  “This will be your second time meeting Pansy?”

  “It is. She was very lovely the last time. Shy but lovely.” Clara pauses at a fond recollection. “She warms up very quickly.”

  They pass under shelter and in the enveloping shade Aunty Ratnam’s smile wanes a little. “Pansy has about six months. We’re hoping she can pull through the year to see her tenth birthday.” Her tone is tender but brutally honest.

  “I understand.”

  “If she doesn’t, the rest of your support will be reimbursed.”

  “Least of my worries, Aunty Ratnam.”

  The matron drops her gaze but her face brightens once more. “All right, I shall not hold you any longer.” She squeezes Clara’s slender arm. “Spend some time with her.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Coterie provides—that much she has to admit. This is the best thing she can do with her money because none of them live very long. It doesn’t matter if she appears as a different person from one child to another. Identities are of no importance to the dying. When the Coterie gives her a new one she’ll move to another hospice and get a new haircut, maybe a new set of colours for her face. What matters is how well she sends them away—the sick and dying children.

  The Director turns back to look at her. “I thought I didn’t recognise the name,” she says, a frown marring her warm demeanour. “But you look awfully familiar to me.”

  “When did you think we’ve met?”

  “Ah.” She looks up at nothing. “A long time ago, a decade, I think.”

  Clara laughs. “It’s my first registration. You records should verify that.”

  “They do, hence I’m puzzled.”

  “Then it checks out.” Clara pulls her duffel higher over her shoulder. “I get that often; maybe it’s the genes. Faces tend to look alike when you’ve seen too many.”

  “That’s very true.” She raises a hand in farewell and departs easily.

  Two decades. She would’ve given the matron a hug and told her how well she has aged over the last twenty years. It was a boy then, nine. A sprightly Malay boy they all called Bang because he talked and acted like a brother to everyone; always fussing, always protective. He had leukaemia and she had held his hands as they wheeled him into surgery. That was the last t
ime she saw him alive. And it was probably the only humane act she was allowed to perform in the misery of her existence.

  In the pink-painted room Clara meets Pansy. The girl is watching cartoons on a TV hung from the ceiling. Bone thin, she has a shawl wrapped around her small shoulders, from which her shrunken neck rises modestly and holds up a sweet, tilting face. Clara remembers how she let anger repress her tears when they told her that Pansy and her sister had been abandoned in a sanctuary shortly after birth.

  “Aunty Clara!” Pansy opens her arms as Clara moves in for the embrace.

  It feels cleansing to sit around and watch cartoons with children. The day is clear and hopeful, and just as they start settling in for a game of Jenga, liveried staff arrive with lunch. Clara is happy to order herself a share. Hospice food isn’t too bad when you’re surrounded by so many lovely people. But without Jenga to break the ice, a small amount of discomfort steals into the void that settles over the clinking of their cutlery. Clara notices how tiny and fragile Pansy’s wrists are.

  “Pansy’s a cute name,” she says. “You don’t hear it much in this country. Sounds very English.”

  “The sisters at the sanctuary named us after flowers.” Pansy sniffled her runny nose and pushed up her spectacles. “My sister’s named Poppy.”

  Clara feels her heart swell. “I knew a Poppy once and he was a boy.”

  Pansy frowns. “Poppy’s a girl’s name.”

  “So is Paige,” says Clara. “Did you know it came from padius, Greek for young boy?”

  “Like a page boy?”

  “You’re very clever.”

  “Aunty Ratnam used to read us fairy tales.” Pansy shows her a toothy grin. “She still does, but not as often. She’s very busy.”

  “I can tell.”

  Silence, and Clara feels obliged to speak. “Do you miss your sister?”

  Pansy bites into her carrot and let the other half fall back into the soup. “She died when I was four. I don’t remember her very much.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s play a game.” Pansy says, chewing. “We can hold our spoons while playing.”

  “Sure, what game?”

  “I say a word and then you say another word that starts with the ending letter of the word I said.”

  Clara grins and spoons up rice and fish. “That’s easy.”

  “In five seconds.”

  “You are very sneaky.”

  Pansy titters. “And then we’ll move on to Jenga.”

  “Deal.”

  / / /

  There’s a poignant thing going when you stay up with a kid till her bedtime. It almost makes Clara cry whenever she puts one to bed. Nine hours—that is how long she has been with Pansy: the time it takes to beat the withdrawals of an unassuageable guilt. She has to dose herself with an act of charity each time the demon wakes and engulfs her. How contemptible.

  She has a nice apartment with a pool, and at 10pm she does laps in it, clocking an hour of labour. The pool lights are out by ten, but the guards have learnt to tolerate her presence.

  A party is going on in a couple of the poolside gazebos. She can smell the barbeque going stale and the chortling of gruff male voices and undertones of feline laughter. She lazes by the edge, catching her breath and looking at a sky so black you can’t see the stars.

  They are looking at her in their drunkenness, she can tell. Clara gets out of the pool and puts on a bathrobe. She’s had enough of leering men. Three years in this place. Two more and she’ll have to relocate. Settling in one place is suicide. If only she’d told this to the ones who hadn’t made it.

  And she knows that without her, he wouldn’t have made it either.

  After a warm shower, Clara puts on music and reclines on a chaise of black leather. By her side, there is a small table of chrome and glass. And on top of it there is an old lacquered box. Once she had tried dumping it at an old lodging, only to retrieve it later because it contained too much. She cradles it over her stomach and opens it to an old melody

  There are hairpins, all of them disused and oxidised. From the top of the pile, she takes out a small monochromatic photograph of a young Asian girl swaddled in European clothes, and edges over it with a finger. It has been snipped from a larger photograph. In it the girl is smiling behind her bonnet because it is her fifteenth birthday. The sun throws nice shadows across her tender face.

  Behind it, a date is scribbled in faded ink. It reads January 1856.

  From somewhere comes a faint beeping, not altogether unpleasant. She fits an earpiece over her ear.

  “You missed three windows,” says a voice.

  “I’ll call in whenever I see fit.”

  “Made contact?”

  “Yes.” Clara reaches for the remote and lowers the music. “Classtwo lead. Amnesiac.”

  “Okay,” says the voice. “I don’t want you touching him till we’re done authenticating, and don’t let the Other Side touch him either.”

  “Funny you should mention it. A bomb just went off in his face.”

  “Pure domestic terrorism—a political hit, Oppo-backed,” says the voice. “Your lead’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Okay. Listen, I want to talk to you about Retirement.”

  An audible chuckle from the earpiece. “Not a chance till this job’s done.”

  “You could reassign.”

  “No guarantee. Trails are hot these days.”

  “But you’re my agent.” Clara is displeased at the way that comes across. “We have to meet to talk this over. It’s serious.”

  “Sorry, as with everything, even my voice is classified,” says the voice. “That’s five hundred years worth of failsafe for you, love.”

  “Go to hell.” She rips off the earpiece.

  For a few minutes she fumes, the young girl and Pansy temporarily forgotten, until her finger finds the frayed edges of the old photograph once more. She looks at it and her gaze relaxes into one of fondness. There are good memories, and she thinks the pain isn’t great enough to make her discard them.

  “So it is,” she whispers to herself, her mind drifting. “Now your name is Landon.”

  The music grows, and soon the overture fills the darkened hall of the apartment.

  “Oh, are you ever an idiot, Arthur,” she adds. “Ever an idiot.”

  7

  AUTHENTICATE

  DAYLIGHT POURS FROM the shuttered windows and draws lines on the floor. The kerosene lamp has burnt itself out; the bottom half of its glass shade charred and darkened. Landon sits up in bed and holds his head against the vertigo that accompanies a hangover. His bleary eyes find the digital clock—11.19. He gets out of bed and starts when he steps on the spine of a journal lying page-down on the floor. He finds himself looking at an entry dated July 26th 1938 when he picks it up. The name “Vivian” is circled in pencil.

  He staggers downstairs and finds Cheok sprawling on the couch, asleep despite the frantic rattling of the front gate, the grunts and snorts of his slumber rising in waves. The coffee table holds empty beer cans and heaps of peanut husks.

  The rattling grows into an impatient rapping. Landon opens the front door and the rapping stopsit.

  It’s the dark-haired Tin-Tin.

  This is it, you stupid schmuck. Today you’re going to jail.

  Landon crosses the driveway hoping he’ll be let off with a fine. It’s another blistering morning and everything looks white in the sunlight. He lifts his hand in greeting and tries to smile. Julian reciprocates with no more than a twitch of his eyebrow and presses a rumpled piece of paper to the gate, then takes it away before Landon can look at it.

  “Sorry, you mind putting that up again?” says Landon.

  “Search warrant,” Julian tells him, shoving it back into his pocket before Landon can get a good look at it. What Landon doesn’t know is that the warrant is for a different address, with a month-old date. Just two hours earlier Julian’s request for one was denied, even though he had backed
it up with very decent paperwork.

  “Well, what you are searching for?”

  “Things that appear out of place.”

  Landon unlatches the gate. “Please.”

  A car horn blares in short bursts. A Nissan GTR coupe pulls up rumbling, its paintwork a splendid liquid blue gloss. A sizeable man emerges, tucks his shades over his bald, meaty head and struts unhurriedly towards them, flashing his pass at Landon. “Marco, Police Intelligence. Pardon my colleague.” And before Landon can respond, Marco drapes a large, burly arm over Julian’s thin shoulders and ushers the other man to one side.

  / / /

  In the privacy afforded by the GTR’s engine-growl, Marco catches Julian’s neck in the crook of his arm and squeezes it hard. The pain shocks Julian and locks up his jaw. “I thought we had an agreement?” he says with a slight tilt of head; his good eye sweeping across Julian’s face.

  Julian keeps up an audacious stare. “I never agreed to anything.”

  “Take the advice, friend.” Marco taps him on a cheek with a thick, coarse finger. “When a superior gives you an assignment, accept it compliantly.”

  “I believe I have the liberty to question.”

  “And you already have the answer.” Marco leans in close enough to exhale smoke-tinged breath into Julian’s face. “You want to ask more questions, you move up the ranks. But right now you obey orders.”

  “I know the rules, Marco,” Julian says. “Until you have an official designation transfer from the top, this case is mine.”

  The rookie’s fortitude impresses him. In an explosion of brute force he tightens his arm around Julian’s throat and almost squeezes his eyes from their sockets. Julian’s breath thins to a wheeze. Then he curls his wrist dexterously around Julian’s neck and snares the throat in a powerful pincer-grip. The larynx shifts and threatens to dislodge. Julian gives a croak of alarm.

  Marco laughs and jerks Julian about, as if engaging in friendly play. “Know where you stand, my forensic friend,” he hisses, grinning. “There’s plenty you don’t know about this administration and its instruments. On top of that, there’s a whole lot more you don’t know about me.”