by Tham Cheng-E
“That’s a girl’s name.”
“It’s a cute name for a toddler,” said Arthur.
“When he grows up he’ll hate you for it.”
“Suits him. Poppy the Floppy.”
Hannah broke out a brief smile, which swiftly receded behind a mask of deliberate sobriety. “Actually it might be nice to have a child.”
Arthur leapt at that. “Really? We could raise him together.”
“He’s yours, Arthur.” Hannah got up and gathered whatever she had brought out from the closet for the nappy change. “Didn’t you see his legs? I never wanted a cripple.”
Her remark ruined the mood between them. In the silence she watched Arthur rock Poppy to sleep. This time the soporific charm seemed to work. The discomfort in Poppy’s face eased, and his lids soon grew heavy.
She unrolled a blanket on the floor beside the couch. “Lay him here, so he doesn’t fall and hurt himself. You can take the couch.”
Arthur was rocking the child and pacing around the room, humming the only lullaby he knew.
“Only for tonight,” she added. “You have to leave in the morning, with the child.”
Arthur didn’t reply. He was pretending he didn’t hear her, she knew. But she saw no need to press the point that she couldn’t deal with another child in her life. He cuddled the child and peered adoringly into his sleeping face. “Oh, the poor boy,” he whispered, gently stroking a cheek with the back of his finger. “He’s so tired.”
25
VIGIL
JOHN PRAYED FOR the first time in years. He did it kneeling at the farthest end of the empty worship hall, hidden between pews. He was silent, not out of reverence, but because he did not know how to begin. He kept his eyes closed, and in the darkness he knew he was talking to God somewhat cognitively, lamenting about his plight and his fears. But no words came to his lips. The guilt of hypocrisy had sealed them. It had been many years since he came to church.
“I could help,” a voice said softly. “With your permission.”
John’s eyes flashed open. An elderly Reverend had sat down next to him. In ordinary circumstances he would’ve noticed if someone came this close. He stared at the Reverend melancholically as he slowly recovered his composure. His back was humbly hunched, but it still loomed large and formidable against the Reverend’s frail frame.
“Bowen, right?” said the Reverend. He had small, smiling eyes and thin, ducky lips. His hair was thick and silver and neatly parted. “You are Ginn’s husband, aren’t you? Did I get your name right? Bowen?”
“Yes,” said John. He left it that way. It was onerous to explain otherwise.
The Reverend shook his hand. “I never forget a face.”
“It’s been a long time.”
The Reverend’s eyes glinted with a tinge of humour. “Did Ginn pester you into coming?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said John.
They moved on to talking about Fanny’s treatments and how brave Ginn had been by teaching Sunday school to perfectly normal, albeit rascally bunch of kids while coming to terms with the needs of her own special child. They spoke about how Ginn, in her bid to dispel fears over Fanny’s deformity, had explained to inquisitive young children that the growing lump on Fanny’s head held special powers that would make everyone around her stronger than they thought they could be.
The men broke into laughter, which ebbed quickly into a cheerless silence.
“It is always difficult for a prodigal son to utter the first words to a welcoming father,” said the Reverend. “And knowing he has been forgiven only makes it harder.”
“It’s pretty much the way you put it.”
“The last time we met I recall you were in the police force.”
“You have a good memory, Reverend. I still am.”
“May I ask if your job is part of the reason?”
“Everything.” John polished his face wearily in his hands. “I can’t get out of it and I can’t really speak about it. Nothing else would give me that kind of insurance for Ginn and Fanny.”
“It’s hard,” the Reverend agreed. “And I’m not talking you out of it as long as it’s legitimate. Render unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. You are doing a beautiful thing for your family.”
“Thank you,” said John. “Ginn told me you’ve got two sons yourself.”
“Missionaries,” the Reverend replied. “They have families in Delhi and Bangalore. Both are earning peanuts but the Lord provides.”
John smiled with him, nodding. “I admire your passion. It’s a small church, so I don’t suppose we give much in offerings.”
“It works better,” said the Reverend. “I prefer many small churches to a large one; that way you get to know your church more intimately. Money’s not such a big thing once you learn to live humbly. It’s actually quite liberating.”
“Just the other day,” John said, thumbing across his shoulder at an imaginary person, “a colleague told me he spent thirty-K on a wine appreciation trip to a Grand Crux vineyard in Bordeaux,” he interrupted himself with a laugh. “I didn’t tell him I spent thirty-K on Fanny’s fourth surgery.
“Another told me about the northern lights he saw at Ivalo, Finland. That’s his third vacation in a year. He went to Santorini in spring and the Bahamas in summer. Ginn reminded me last week that we haven’t been to the cinema in three years.”
The Reverend listened.
“The faith is inside me.” John bit his lower lip in careful thought. “I know it all comes to that at the end—faith alone, however you try to reason. I have no qualms in accepting the love Christ has for me but I can’t stop myself from questioning. Why us? Why Fanny?” John exhaled lengthily. “I overcame my doubts, Reverend. But I can’t overcome my bitterness.”
The Reverend spent a moment in thought before he spoke. “Ginn is a very wise woman. There are things in life that bring out the unseen strength in people. It is such strength that stirs and inspires courage and hope, and above all these people reflect a love that the world doesn’t recognise. There are those who think we’re comforting ourselves by saying such things but seriously what do they know?”
“If I had the choice I’d gladly give this strength to others,” said John.
“It is a profound subject, Bowen,” said the Reverend. “People think they rule fate by making choices; they think they must always be allowed to choose even though they don’t have a clue how their life will turn out or how it must end. But you can do something about it while you’re at it. In that way you can’t blame everything on a predestined life. It’s like being assured of your salvation and not being complacent about it.
“Instead you work at it because you know it has to be that way, because you know about gratitude. When it comes to predestination you either condemn yourself right from the beginning or work the best out of uncertainties.”
“Working out your salvation.” John surprised himself with his ability to conjure a vague memory of it. “Philippians.”
“With fear and trembling,” the Reverend added approvingly. “Philippians two-twelve. It’s about being certain of what you’ve been assured of.”
“With my family and the job I have I don’t know what I’m assured of anymore.”
The Reverend regarded John with a tilt of his head and an air of paternal fondness. “I see tons of courage and strength in you, Bowen. You keep going despite the odds; a day, a minute, a second at a time, never expecting too much and hoping for nothing in return except an assurance of joy at the end of everything. The one who spurns such simple faith as religious nonsense will never learn of its strength. And the one who lives by it touches hearts and souls. Believe me. I’ve seen so many.”
John gave a contemplative nod. “Thank you, Reverend.”
“Now with your permission, Bowen, allow me pray to with you.”
/ / /
John adjusts a spherical device at the corner of Landon’s bedroom where the walls and c
eiling meet. One of the components of his surveillance system that disperses a nano-cloud around the property, allowing John to remotely scan every detail of any intruders within a half-mile search radius.
The bedroom is poorly lit from the single bulb. He surveys the room and studies the old bookshelf from which he had nicked a journal on his first night here. It holds Landon’s collected consciousness, saved on ink and paper. And that consciousness contains the answers to many secrets if one knows where to look. It suddenly occurs to him that whoever left the message had wanted him to know that CODEX might have already found what it was looking for.
He comes down the ladder to find Landon crouching by his poster bed, lighting his kerosene lamp. The wavering flame throws strange shadows across his face. The filmy curtains by the shuttered window sway to a night breeze that carries the scent of rain.
“The whole place could go up in flame with that,” says John.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this if you’re not staying.” Landon carefully replaces the glass vitrine. “Where will you be when they go off? I’d be long dead by then.”
“Someone will be here.” John rummages through his backpack, replaces a few coils of wiring, and starts running diagnostics on his egg-shaped chromium device. It is now lit with many colours, and a part of it bleeds into a touchpad with numbers and dials.
“I recall someone pricking my finger with that thing,” says Landon.
John looks up at him. “What did he look like?”
“Burly fellow. Think he’s got a bad eye. Sorry, can’t remember beyond that.”
John holds up the chromium egg as if to scan the air around him. “Whoever possesses this thing is a CODEX operative,” he says. “It means someone else has made contact.”
“From the Other Side?”
“Possibly.”
“What is it?”
“An omnicron.” John answers. The smallness of the device makes him look like a hunched ogre in the shadowy illumination.
“It records everything within a sphere of influence—like a black box. Chronicles events three-dimensionally through a nanocloud that picks up unseen details a video recording doesn’t, like the stuff in pockets and whoever’s standing behind you, around you. Serum technology.”
“How exactly does the Serum work?”
“It embeds itself in the host body and alters its cellular composition. Then it starts a morphological process that spreads like a cancer. But instead of killing you it renews your cellular composition and ends up slowing the ageing process.”
Landon stares at the glimmering piece. “You could make good money with it.”
John puts away the omnicron. “With the right programming the Serum has been observed to reverse the effects of many deadly ailments. Cancers, tumours, you name it. If I had the choice I’d put my daughter through the trials. But it’s so hushed up we can’t roll out its medical benefits despite knowing about them.”
“What happened to your daughter?”
“Neuroblastoma.”
“What’s that?”
“Check it up on the internet.” John makes it clear from his tone that the conversation ends here.
“I’m sorry to hear.” Landon tucks his hands in his pockets and scratches the back of his ear, as he habitually does whenever he feels tenuous about something. “I thought if you’re part of this conspiracy maybe you could help me with my identity problem. I’m beginning to look a little too young for someone over fifty.”
“CODEX has got all eyes on you now. A new identity won’t hide you.”
“I guessed. It’s just so hard these days.”
“It’s always been hard,” says John. “In the old days when we had censuses and registration ordinances CODEX had systems in place to make sure identities were as legit as they could. They had this crackpot idea of getting Chronomorph-operatives to raise a child as their own, have them registered with a legitimate identity and then take it over when it matured.”
“What happened to the child then?”
“Silenced.”
A profanity slips from Landon’s lips. “Where did they get them? They couldn’t possibly have abducted all of them?”
“Orphanages. It’s easy if CODEX ran it. They worked like farms.”
“Isn’t it easier to forge documents?”
John coils a length of cable and shakes his head. “They thought forging documents left trails, involved too many greased hands. It was supposedly easier to dispose of bodies. No one would bother with twenty or thirty missing children when there were hundreds of homeless corpses out on the streets.”
“Bloody nefarious…when did this happen?”
“At the turn of the century. It didn’t last. They called it off after a fifteen-year trial. One generation. It was a wrong move but what’s new? History’s full of wrong moves and innocent killings. Like I said—cracked.”
“Cracked as hell,” Landon says.
John bends over to zip up a compartment in his backpack and a pair of dog-tags strung with a silver cross jangle out of his shirt. He grabs them and shoves them back in.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” Landon gibes. “For spiritual protection? Or to profess your faith?”
“Neither,” says John. “It reminds me of who I am.”
“A holy man?”
“A follower of Christ.” John corrects. “Rather, I’m trying to be one.”
“Did you do it to please someone? Your wife?”
“It grew into a conviction.”
“My mother used to talk like that,” says Landon. “Couldn’t remember much of it but I always thought that’s what this thing’s supposed to do—gets you hooked.”
John shakes his head, points to his temple. “You have to work in a lot of sense to get yourself into it.”
“Why even bother?”
“Because I’m convinced it’s the truth.”
“Truth is what you make of it,” says Landon. “And faith is always blind.”
John slings his backpack over his shoulder. “How blind is mine, do you think?”
“Very. If it isn’t empirically justified.”
John gives a slight sigh, as if he is about to launch into an explanation he has repeated many times over. “You’re making the mistake of assuming that faith and the empirical negate each other. In reality they don’t. There is a kind of Truth unattainable by the empirical. That’s where faith comes in.”
Landon shrugs. “All believers claim their brand of mumbo jumbo is Truth.”
“I’ve got the only mumbo jumbo telling us we’re so depraved that it’s the Almighty who had to make the first move by nailing himself to a piece of wood for our damned sakes so we won’t burn in hell. If there truly is a God you would’ve expected this much of him, wouldn’t you?”
Landon pulls out a pipe from his pocket and tries to light it with shaky fingers. “It’s the first time I heard you curse,” he says. “You said ‘damned’.”
“I promised Ginn I’d cut back on it. And the cigarettes.”
“Ginn your wife?”
“No, a prehistoric relative.”
Landon chuckles and ejects a stream of smoke. “I almost believed you.”
John checks his watch, picks up two black briefcases and shoulders past him on his way out. “I’ll be remotely observing the property so don’t call me at the slightest shadow or sound. It’s just a precaution, nothing more.”
Somehow John’s reassurance sounds like juvenile wheedling. Landon examines the hardy little transmitter in his hand and surveys the length of wires running across the ceiling and corridor, and the tiny red lights of sensors and monitors planted amongst the antiquated clutter. Someone is out to murder him and the reality of it hits him like molten surf.
“I’ll see myself out.” John raises a hand in farewell and treads soundlessly downstairs.
/ / /
Landon doesn’t follow. He stands morosely by the doorway of his bedroom, pipe in hand. The scr
eech of a car engine rises and falls away into silence. Against the stillness he hears the ticking of the clock. It reads one in the morning. A gust of wind fills the curtains. A few minutes later, the first drops of rain amplify into a downpour. He rushes over to the windows and slams them shut. He checks all the rooms and makes it doubly certain that all openings are latched and doors locked. Twice he conducts a tour of the house and finds a note on the dining table:
You forgot our durian date.
Left you a pack and some mangosteens in the fridge. I drop by tomorrow night with nasi lemak from Boon Lay market. Hope you feeling better. Very worried when I saw accident on TV—Cheok.
He berates himself and promises to make it up. As a final measure he tucks a kitchen knife under his mattress and another beneath his pillow. He reads a few journal entries by lamplight. Even then the adrenaline continues coursing through his body, denying him sleep. Over the next hour he leafs through the pages, paying particular attention to entries from the 1960s.
One entry describes a visit to the Van Kleef aquarium with a child on his fourth birthday. The child was given a tin of biscuits and ended up sharing them with whoever came his way because he wanted the empty tin more than anything else. They devoured sugared ice balls and watched the bumboats off Clifford Pier at dusk, then they romped about the lawn and fired off firecrackers left over from the Lunar New Year celebrations. The accounts of the child ended abruptly in March 1965.
And the memory of that fateful day surfaces.
Landon presses the journal to his chest and a teardrop smudges the ink. “Oh Poppy…” He shudders with waves of grief. “I’m so, so sorry…”
26
MAY 1955
FOUR ROWS OF women, most of whom were driven by penury, knelt on burlap sacks and sorted coffee beans by their colour and appearance. The beans lay in furrows on the warehouse floor, and the women would remove defective ones not picked up during hulling. Everyone worked quietly.
The sounds of the riot came from afar—a cacophony of Mandarin slogans and frightful, belligerent shouting. They ebbed and flowed like roars from a distant football game. When they fell away that meant the water jets were being employed. If the rioters took their cause here they’d torch the slums and the police wouldn’t lift a finger. It would only have been convenient.