Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  Landon rolls the device in his palm. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Next,” John hands him a small device resembling a remote car key. “Keep this with your house keys, or somewhere accessible. It’s a caller for when you think you’re in danger. Just slide the tab, press, and someone will come for you within minutes.” After he does a dry demonstration of it he starts walking out to the driveway.

  “Aren’t you supposed to do this round the clock?”

  John gets into his car and rolls down the window. “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”

  The engine neighs and rumbles. John backs out of the driveway and cruises away.

  In the dead of the night, John returns.

  He leaps dexterously over the padlocked gate, retrieves the journal from the shrubbery, and departs without a hitch.

  19

  ACQUISITION

  AT FOURBEES, HAPPY Hour concludes at the stroke of midnight, and the last few patrons depart. Landon bids them goodbye as they hobble past the counter with pink faces frozen in alcohol-fuelled rapture.

  He hears Donovan in the kitchen. Once the door shuts the clanging and scrubbing gets louder. The music goes off and white lights come on behind the bar. Tables are cleared and re-laid. Soiled napkins, aprons, and tablecloths go into the laundry bags for pickup. Water fills the kitchen sink and slops over the edge. The dishes are the first of chores to be done because the last food orders were in by ten, and the kitchen guys started washing early. Landon cleans out his espresso machine, upends the hopper and draws a mop across the dining floor. This is usually Sam’s job, but she’s off tonight.

  The crew leaves and Raymond hunches by the counter, poring through the day’s accounts over a glass of port. Landon mounts a ladder and touches up their little jocular rhyme with pieces of coloured chalk.

  “Go home,” Raymond’s voice rises above an Etude from the speakers. “I’ll have Andy touch it up in the morning.”

  “Be done in a minute.” He takes a damp rag and polishes the birch panels that frame the chalkboard. They open to reveal compartments half-filled with bottles of rum, vermouth, gin, and syrups. Along a small section of the wall runs a conduit bearing a tiny spray-painted arrow and stencilled letters that read: GAS. A spanking new meter has been attached to it.

  “We replaced the meter?” he asks Raymond.

  Raymond sips his port and punches the calculator. “The gas man came by yesterday. Part of some upgrading works for the area. Replaced some pipes in the back too.”

  Landon squints at the jumping numbers on the dial. “The meter’s moving.”

  “Fast?”

  “No, crawling.”

  “Residual.” Raymond sloshes his port and sips it again. “It’s always running a little. That way they make us pay a few cents more each day.”

  “Really?”

  Raymond turns to him, his reading glasses perched low over his nose. “You got a good nose. Smell any leaks?”

  Landon stows the ladder and checks the kitchen. Its white tiled walls gleam. Copper pans of different sizes hang glittering from stainless steel hooks. The stoves sit silent. Everything smells faintly of grease and detergent. No hisses. “Nothing,” he says.

  Raymond gathers up his papers, drains his glass and pushes it to Landon. “I’ll be in the office.”

  The lights at the dining area go off. The bar is now accented in a pleasant, sleepy glow from the remaining few downlights. Landon didn’t see Clara today. In fact, he hasn’t seen her since the day they met. He retrieves the paper napkin from his wallet and reads her beautiful, leaning script:

  P.S. Be wary of the one who warns.

  The memory of that day is fading. He knows that because he has already forgotten much of their conversation. On hindsight he should’ve written everything down: every detail, every sliver of speech. An incomplete memory is like an earworm. Part of the melody repeats itself in your head, the rest of it at most a shadow. The words on the napkin are music that remains incomplete, and the prospect of completing them seems impossibly remote.

  Landon rests wearily upon the cold granite top, his eyes lingering on the script. At last he strengthens his resolve, crushes the napkin and tosses it into the bin. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thinks. Perhaps despair and solitude mask everything. When you’ve given up hope on something it no longer hurts. It just feels dead.

  But he also feels light-headed. He tries to ignore it by taking stock of the liquor on the hardwood shelf behind him. When his head starts floating he abandons the task and dodders over to Raymond’s office to bid him goodbye. It’s his day off tomorrow and he might just sleep in.

  He enters the office and finds Raymond dead.

  He swivels the chair and Raymond’s corpse thuds to the floor. It looks as if it is asleep, except that the skin has a deadened pallor to it. For a full minute Landon sees nothing but the dead gecko and its grey flesh and a wave of nausea sweeps him. There is a cordless telephone on Raymond’s desk, but he does not use it. He rushes over to the bar, snatches up the phone there and dials the emergency number.

  A tremendous blast decimates the liquor shelves behind the bar and throws Landon over the countertop. A fireball billows from the kitchen doorway like the tongue of a fiery demon and tears out the timber frames.

  The spilled liquor ignites the bar area and sends flames blasting to the ceiling like a furnace. Landon hears the ceiling boards crack and snap; seconds later the lights go out. A rippling canopy of black smoke gathers, and amid the sooty welters he sees flashes of flame.

  Burning liquor bleeds towards him. He presses his glass-riddled back against the counter. Blood paints half of his face and stings his eye. The smoke gathers and charring ceiling boards crackle and fall like black snow. He begins to crawl desperately towards what he thinks might be the exit.

  The birch panels pop and snap; a great split runs through the middle of the Baa Baa Black Brew chalkboard as it warps in the heat. Falling debris ignites the tablecloths. The flames jump from one table to the next. Landon sees no exit and expects no aid. He clambers to his feet and falls right back down, overwhelmed by a sudden, debilitating wave of heat. He presses his cheek to the floor, which remains comparatively cool. A flashover isn’t far off now. In a few seconds his senses will be dulled and death should quickly follow.

  Oh, Rachel…

  20

  SEPTEMBER 1964

  THE STREETS WERE empty on the morning Poppy got really ill. Between mangy rows of two-storey tenements a prodigious assortment of pole-hung laundry swayed like festival ribbons. Beyond their rooflines loomed the blue cylindrical hulk of a massive gasholder. On the ground floor businesses sat barricaded behind rusting diamond-lattice grilles.

  Four-year old Poppy hugged his biscuit tin and pattered behind Arthur on slippered feet, his head hung penitently. His scalp glistened with sweat beneath spiny stubs of cropped hair, his upper lip smeared with goo, his brows hot to the touch.

  A solitary mongrel foraged along the open drain beside the five-foot ways. By the street burnt-out shells of Morrises and Volvos bore testament to the brutality of the riots. Then an old air raid siren moaned, proclaiming the lifting of yet another curfew and portending fresh violence. A hate-infused mob might be waiting to cudgel necks and leave heads hanging on fleshy hinges.

  But what could I do, let his fever burn?

  They found the medical hall on the ground floor of a shophouse, closed. Arthur knew that whoever ran it lived upstairs. His fists, thumping against the grilles, obliterated the morning calm.

  Nothing stirred.

  Now that the curfew was lifted anyone would associate the ruckus with knife-welding maniacs out for blood. Whoever ran the place must’ve holed themselves up in a room praying that the grilles would hold up. Every waiting moment drove Arthur to greater fits of rage, and he hammered still harder on the grilles.

  At the same time Poppy broke out in a barrage of coughing. The whooping bouts intensified and made him throw up his
breakfast. When Arthur took him in and thumped his back he latched quietly onto Arthur’s shoulders for comfort.

  He simply refused to cry—that tough little sprog.

  But it worked a miracle. Seconds later they heard the clank of a key, and behind the grilles, a panel of the folding metal doors flipped open to reveal the pale, cadaverous face of an old physician.

  Arthur’s heart sprang alive. In sputters of broken dialect and hideously simplified English he conveyed Poppy’s ailment and midway through it the physician hustled them in. Arthur heard the metallic snap of a lock behind him. And in its wake came the faint buzz of electric light bulbs.

  It was a darkwood cavern redolent of bitter herbs. Behind cloudy glass counters rose a repository—a massive lattice of wooden square drawers, each inscribed with a single line of calligraphic Mandarin script on yellowed paper. There were crates crammed full of sundried figs, hawthorn, rhubarbs, reishi mushrooms, antlers and so on. At one end of the counter huge steamy glass vats held macerated liquor, one of them containing the coiled carcass of a cobra.

  The physician began examining Poppy by pressing him all over like he was a ball of dough and then taking his pulse from the wrist. He reprovingly scrunched his face, got up with a laboured grunt and dawdled behind the counter, retrieving an assortment of herbs from the labelled drawers and measuring them out with a daching scale, mumbling unintelligibly to himself the whole way. Then he began explaining to Arthur the types and qualities of each herb with a pedantic, admonishing scowl, as if the ignorance of them was an unpardonable sin.

  Arthur nodded meaningfully at the appropriate intonations in the physician’s speech, having understood little except to brew the contents of each pink paper packet for an hour and administer the concoction every three hours.

  With the clatter of an abacus the physician worked out the payment. Arthur paid with four crinkly notes and hoped in vain that they would get him some change in return. From the physician’s unyielding disposition he knew there was a premium to be paid for services rendered outside business hours. When it was all done Arthur and Poppy were spat out through the narrow opening in the grilles, which then sealed itself with considerable haste.

  / / /

  The eatery was tucked into the ground level of a corner shophouse, at the crossroad between Kallang and Crawford Streets. Arthur, his arm sore from Poppy’s weight, passed under a large pair of Mandarin ideograms cast into the lintel plasterwork. It read Prosperous Hong.

  With the town still reeling from yesterday’s riots, it would’ve been a miracle if any businesses ran at all, considering the risks. The plump, polygamous owner of Prosperous Hong decided it would operate regardless and persuaded his stall tenants to return with the promise of a discount on the month’s rent. Arthur had given his word so he had to work. It probably augured good business.

  But that morning Prosperous Hong saw only its few elderly regulars, whose habit of burying their noses in the morning papers over a cup of coffee or tea remained unbroken, killer mobs or not.

  Arthur sat Poppy down on an old wicker couch in a crummy backroom, and brought water to a boil in an earthenware pot for the medicine before he got started on the coffee roasting. He lit charcoal in a stone stove, fanned the embers to a healthy glow and kicked it under the oven—a sooty contraption of a steel barrel turned on its side. In went the beans, three huge dollops of butter, and Arthur started revolving the barrel with turns of the crank.

  The alley basked in its rattle. Otherwise the morning was still. Then salvos of childish whooping broke the harmony. It was too much.

  Arthur stopped his work and snatched up a greasy phone in the backroom and dialled for the only help that came to mind. After grovelling over the handset for a few minutes he scooped Poppy into his arms and left the eatery.

  / / /

  The public bus took them to an estate wedged between Margaret Drive and Commonwealth Avenue. Hawkers plied along Dawson Road that ran northwards through the estate, and there Arthur bought milk from an elderly Sikh with four scraggy cows, and bread off a shallow basket perched over a younger Sikh’s white turban. Poppy, though feverish, amused himself by patting the cows’ ribbed barrels before Arthur yanked him away.

  They passed into a block of flats that had windows of blue glass and concrete balustrades cast in the likeness of brick patterns flipped vertically. Arthur bore Poppy in his arms and stormed up two flights of stairs, arriving at a compact little foyer that accommodated four flats.

  One of them had its door open, and there Hannah stood waiting. She was dressed in a white sleeveless blouse, floral skirt, a knitted headband that kept her hair behind her ears and looked achingly beautiful. From inside the apartment Doris Day was singing Tea for Two.

  “Sorry for the late notice,” said Arthur, his breaths deep and heavy.

  Hannah turned up her lips at the corners in tepid greeting. She waited, as if she knew he had more to say to her.

  “I was thinking of letting out my house at Clacton…” Arthur went on undecidedly. “Is it expensive to rent this place?”

  “Thirty-five a month,” she said. “They have the rates at Princess House down the road.” She gave a desultory nod towards a spot somewhere behind her.

  “You searched this out on your own?”

  Hannah folded her arms. “Why the concern?”

  “Nothing.” Arthur smiled uncomfortably. “You just sounded reluctant over the phone.”

  “I don’t particularly like children.” Hannah flashed him a look of disdain. “I thought you knew.”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” said Arthur. “I saw Khun the other day; told him I couldn’t pay him just yet.”

  “I’m living alone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Arthur forced a smile. “Hope he isn’t bothering you.”

  “I took care of that.”

  “How?”

  “Give it a rest, Arthur,” Hannah said, her expression dithering between that of spite and sympathy. “I wouldn’t even let you touch me.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Arthur nodded fawningly. “I promised the boss I’d work today, so I really appreciate you helping me out.”

  “Come get him at seven, no later, please.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Hannah gave him a dutiful twitch of her lips that revealed more impatience than anything else. Arthur didn’t understand. Why the sudden coldness? She’d previously given him the idea that they had something going. The idea of women blowing hot and cold was driving him nuts.

  He dug into the paper bag he had brought with him. “I have some milk and bread. Poppy threw up his breakfast earlier. And the medicine,” he handed her the pink triangular packets. “Brew for an hour each and administer every three hours. I suppose you’ll need two before I get back.”

  Hannah returned the bottles. “Not the milk. They might carry parasites.”

  Arthur kept them. “I was thinking,” he said, raising his tone a little to get Hannah’s attention. “When Poppy recovers maybe we could all go for a show. Mary Poppins just left the cinemas, we could catch it at the drive-ins for half the price.”

  “You don’t have a car, Arthur.”

  “I could borrow one.”

  “We’ll see.”

  When Arthur turned to leave Poppy unleashed a feral cry and ran to him. Hannah’s attempt at restraining him only strengthened his resolve in holding Arthur back. She entered the flat and returned with her guitar and caught Poppy’s attention by playing the familiar arpeggios of Romance Anónimo.

  Despite hearing difficulties, Poppy could discern sharp and high-pitched sounds, and was particularly fond of the sound of guitars. A few bars into it Hannah offered the guitar to Poppy, whose gaze began shifting tenuously between Arthur and the instrument. It took a final reassurance from Arthur before he took it and tottered into the apartment with Hannah.

  The door to Hannah’s flat clicked shut and Arthur was left standing by the threshold.

&n
bsp; After all these years, he never understood the distance between them.

  / / /

  On the contrary, Hannah understood everything only too well. She had to keep Arthur close, but how close she herself could never tell. Besides, she didn’t approve of the way he’d taken Poppy in. Children permeated everything. They roused emotions you thought you’d managed to keep in check. And just as you thought you’d achieved stoicism, they tenderised your heart and weakened your will, especially the innocent ones.

  Especially orphans.

  Her encounters with Arthur and Poppy afforded rare moments when she felt emboldened and compelled to go on living. At the same time, they made her feel vulnerable and burdened. They were making her fear something she never thought she would—death.

  Hannah put aside her guitar after playing Romance Anónimo eight times over on Poppy’s request, and in doing so managed to get Poppy to drink the first bitter dose of the sepia-toned herbal concoction. Poppy tapped Hannah’s arm and pointed at the guitar by the wall. When she refused he persisted, tapping and humming and pointing doggedly with his little hand, ceasing only at her reproachful glare because he wasn’t used to her looking that way. Instead she indulged him with a box of faux jewellery while she embroidered.

  At lunch they went to a nearby market that sold cooked food, a hubbub of street hawkers on patches of lawn, conducting a symphony of clanking woks and roaring furnaces. At one stall Hannah had congee ladled into a steel warmer. Turning around, she found Poppy by a fruit stall. He was pulling himself over the edge of a crate in an attempt to look inside when it overturned and sent dozens of persimmons bobbing across the rutted ground.

  Hannah scrambled to collect the tumbling fruits while Poppy stood guilt-ridden. She returned the sullied persimmons in a little heaps, with an apology. Even then the stallholders fumed. They were a hollow-chested man and his wife with thin, scowling lips and vicious eyes. They derided Hannah’s efforts in a spate of dialect and demanded that she pay for the damages. When she offered to clean the fruits a hail of invectives deplored her acute lack of business sense. By then the commotion had drawn a small crowd.