Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  A round of irascible shouting sounded unnervingly close. The workers looked so nervous that Arthur decided to send them home while there was still daylight. He then chained up the large barn-doors just as the exterior came alive with the clatter of booted feet, accompanied by the hollow shrill of a police whistle. The din drove Arthur behind a timber column below the mezzanine deck. A shape rushed across the vertical slits between sheets of zinc cladding.

  He picked up a shovel and hid in a shadowed corner. The chained doors erupted in a hail of frantic pounding.

  Indecision gnawed at him, and as he dithered the pounding fell to a series of slow, infuriated beats. Arthur wanted to harden his heart and wait it out, hoping that the rioter would give up. But a pang of pity drove him to approach the door.

  His hesitation made him clumsy, and he knocked the shovel over. The noise gave him away, and the pounding at the door rose in tenacity. He held his breath. It could be an entire gang for all he knew. But having decided that he did not stand on the side of the police, he unchained the door.

  The stranger leapt in like a gust of wind, dressed in a shirt, a bandana and a pair of oversized slacks. Before Arthur could react the stranger closed the doors and threaded the chain through them.

  “Lock,” he demanded, his voice muffled behind a damp towel that obscured half of his face. At first it felt like the stranger was calling his name, then Arthur felt the padlock in his hand and quickly thrust it out.

  At the snap of the lock the stranger withdrew from the door and watched another menagerie of shapes fleet by, accompanied by more whistle shrills and shouting. When the commotion ebbed the stranger pulled off the bandana and surprised Arthur by shaking free a headful of long, damp locks.

  “Hannah,” she said with a huff, lifting her flushed, sweaty cheeks.

  He shook her hand. Her slender fingers were soft and cold to the touch.

  “They killed a policeman.” She slumped onto a sack. “Torched him alive in his car. I heard they beat the hell out of a man somewhere near Alexandra Circus.”

  Arthur found no reason to speak, so he listened.

  “It pissed them off,” she swung her hair from one shoulder to the other and wrung water out of them. “They chased us down and whipped us with everything they’ve got. They turned back at the edge of Bukit Ho Swee though; wouldn’t risk following us into the alleys.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Some rioters got shit for brains,” she groused. “A chap was wounded by a gunshot, I told them to get him to a doctor but they refused, preferring instead to parade him around the crowds till he died. He was what—seventeen? Don’t think they’re here for the cause. They just joined up for fun.”

  Arthur finally got his voice back. “What business have you with them?”

  “Anti-colonialism,” said Hannah. “I don’t care much for the Hock Lee drivers but if part of the cause goes to merdeka, count me in. I held banners for them and performed some dances in the morning to cheer them on. Joined in the march until things turned ugly.”

  “You’re from one of those Chinese schools.”

  “Joined the student movement in ‘53.”

  “You speak very good English for a Chinese-ed.”

  “Thank you,” said Hannah. “And you don’t look very Chinese yourself.”

  “I have a bit of everything.”

  Hannah pouted and gave a nod of disinterest. She sniffed the air and picked up a handful of coffee beans from a sack beside her. “What kind?”

  “Lintong Arabica,” Arthur replied. “From Sumatra.”

  “Can you tell by smelling them?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can?” Hannah’s eyes grew wide. “No.”

  Arthur shrugged.

  “Where did you learn to speak English?” she asked.

  “The free Malay school provided by the British.”

  “That was a very long time ago.” The suspicion in Hannah’s tone rang sharp. “You must be older than you look. Are you a local?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got identification?”

  “Why should I show it to you?”

  “You haven’t got any?” It didn’t sound like a question.

  He felt demeaned. “I’m not obliged to answer.”

  “Then don’t.” Hannah held him in a haughty stare. “But I want to thank you for what you did. Drop by at the Chinese middle school along Goodman Road at four pm tomorrow.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Just come.”

  Arthur tried to appear indifferent to her offer. “It’s near where I live.”

  Hannah tilted her head the other way and ran her fingers through her hair. “So where do you live?”

  “Clacton Road.”

  “Ah.” Hannah stood up and headed for the exit. In seconds the lock snapped open in her hands and the chains rolled off the door. She stole a look outside and winked at Arthur over her shoulder. “Don’t be late then.”

  / / /

  The Chinese middle school was a sprawling compound of oblong classroom blocks of whitewashed concrete capped with Chinese hipped roofs. It had a field and a miniature lake stippled with duckweed, hyacinths and lotus pads. A concrete architrave framed the school gates and bore its name in calligraphic Mandarin ideograms.

  Arthur found the gates latched and locked. After waiting for half an hour he resolved to leave; it was then he noticed what appeared to be coffee beans laid out along the roadside kerb, at intervals where one bean was just within visual range of another. He picked them up as he went and found that they led him to a point of entry—a part of the chain-link fence that had come loose.

  The coffee trail now skirted a water-damaged quadrangle and stretched on to the foot of a classroom block. There it led up a staircase flanked by concrete screens tessellated in motifs of clouds and bats. He scaled four flights of steps before the trail ended at a corridor below the overhanging roof eaves. It ran on beside a series of decrepit rooms choked full of dusty furniture, cardboard props, old fabrics and other worthless items. From the depths of these cryptic spaces drifted the haunting melody of Romance Anónimo.

  It was being played on a guitar in a halting, amateurish manner. Arthur followed it to the end of the corridor and found Hannah seated before a mountain of plastic chairs beside the stairwell.

  “Late,” came her laconic greeting. She was in uniform—a clean white blouse and light brown skirt. She looked very good in them.

  “It took me a while to figure out your candy trail.”

  “Excuses.” Hannah put away her guitar. “Sit down.” She gestured at one of the empty chairs near him, some flecked with old paint and dusty with chalk. As soon as Arthur sat down she said, “So what coffee beans are those?”

  Arthur took a whiff of the heap in his hand. “Regular stuff.”

  “Not hard to tell by my gainful employment of them.”

  “A blend,” Arthur took another whiff. “Mostly robusta. Indonesia, Lampung maybe.”

  “Astounding. I’m impressed.”

  “Thank you.” Arthur gave a gracious bow of his head. “You’re pretty astounding yourself at picking locks.”

  Hannah slow-blinked her eyes and pressed her lips into a deliberate, pensive smile. Apparently she had no intention of responding to Arthur’s shifty commendation. It was obvious that he had suspected something.

  “I thought school’s closed?” he added. Her stare was lingering too long for comfort.

  “It is.”

  “Why are you in uniform?”

  “Had to look convincing. Makes it easier for me to leave home.”

  “You mean to your parents?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Whoever stupid enough to be fooled. School’s the safest place there is during a curfew. Do you like my little hideout?”

  “It’s decent.”

  “You don’t recognise me, do you?” said Hannah.

  Arthur’s heart made a pleasant leap. He did not expect the question and for a mom
ent his mind stalled. “Have we met?”

  Hannah suddenly exuded an air of insouciance. “Perhaps as passing strangers.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember well.”

  “Don’t be.” Hannah chirped with her chin in her hand. She crossed her fair, slender legs and started flexing an ankle habitually and went on looking cheekily at him.

  Arthur basked in this, the company of a lovely stranger, but he was increasingly flummoxed over what was going on. “So what are we doing here?”

  “You’re expecting a kiss? Perhaps something more?”

  Arthur’s ears turned hot.

  “I’m in the identity business,” said Hannah, now appearing rather pompous and impish about it. “I thought I could get you one.”

  Arthur had to concede that her admission disappointed him.

  Hannah put her chin back into her hands. “Are you an illegal immigrant?”

  “No.”

  “Born and bred here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Liar,” said Hannah. “You would’ve got yourself an identity when the registration ordinance came about in ‘48.”

  Arthur had rehearsed for such conversations. “I got a registration of live birth back in ‘38. When the ordinance came about they told me I was too young to register, since I was under twelve and without a guardian. I tried again when I was fifteen but they rejected me because they said my birth registration was nothing more than a hospital record and that they’ve received too many forgeries to believe my story.”

  “How old are you, exactly?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You don’t look seventeen.”

  “I take it as a compliment.”

  “Don’t take it too far.”

  Arthur threw out his arms a display of helplessness. “They wanted someone else who could validate my identity before they’d have me registered. When I told them my entire family died in the war they told me to get a guardian who would do so.”

  “Rotten colonial administration,” Hannah griped, mumbling. “Then again, a live birth registration isn’t proof of identity. If the police catch you in the vicinity of any riots they’ll label you a commie and have you arrested.”

  “With the way I look?” Arthur touched a finger to his nose. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Eurasians aren’t off the list,” said Hannah. “Communism ranks as the highest threat to the region after the Japanese. They’ll still put you through a nice long interrogation and once they discover you’re without an identity they’d have you deported to China. But I could offer some help to fix this.”

  Arthur listened glumly. The romantic prospect of the encounter was vanishing like mist in the sun. What better place to hold such surreptitious conversation than the old attic of a closed school at the break of curfew? Hannah was simply being practical. A kiss would’ve made his day. Even a braided friendship band would help. At least it would’ve suggested a beginning. But Hannah, as he had suspected, wasn’t what she seemed.

  “So you accepting my help or not?” said Hannah.

  “You can get me an identity?”

  “Of course. It’s my business.”

  “All right.”

  Hannah smiled sweetly and rose to her feet.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “Lavender Street.”

  Arthur frowned. “The red light district?”

  “No one’s going to ask questions, Arthur.” Hannah surveyed him, somewhat contemptuously, from head to toe. “You look far too mellowed for anyone to believe you’re an underage seventeen-year-old.”

  / / /

  In contrast to her earlier vivacity Hannah did not speak a word throughout the journey. They went along Lavender Street and turned into the red-light district of Jalan Besar. Hannah hooked her arm around the crook of Arthur’s. Her skin felt cool and smooth even in the humid equatorial air. “Sorry if this makes you a pervert,” she said, brushing hair from her face. “We’re less conspicuous this way.”

  Arthur’s heart sank deeper. No one would be in the identity business if they weren’t swindling tramps. And if she was indeed one he would’ve done better to reject her offer right where they met at the warehouse and dispense with this stupid romantic charade. Now he couldn’t turn back because he didn’t like things turning ugly, not when it came to relationships. He hobbled on beside her like a leashed puppy and wondered if he should’ve just paid for a night’s worth of her services and been done with it. The thought repulsed him immediately.

  The main street had the usual complement of shabby shophouses and wholesale businesses. But the Jalan Besar junction, with its garish lighting and hoary tenements, offered lewd prospects for the night. Shuttered windows were thrown open, where powdered women lifted their skirts and adjusted their stockings and nylon underwear.

  Men—locals and tourists—shopped for the night’s company. And when they started taking an interest in Hannah, Arthur tightened his grip around her arm.

  They turned a corner and a few tipsy sailors called out to her, “Hoy there tidy love, we got four huge willies looking out for ya and we’ll triple what he’s payin’ ya!”

  “Too early to be drinking, twits,” Hannah replied. “You won’t last the night.”

  They left the catcalls behind them and Arthur looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was following. “Why bother answering?”

  “Oh, shut up.” Hannah dragged him into an alley where more pimps solicited business with their wares hidden behind closed doors. “We’re here.”

  A peeling wooden door marked their destination. Hannah said something in Cantonese to a heavy-eyed door-man and took Arthur into a short corridor suffused in pink light. It led into a larger space fringed by more doors. Outside these doors were queues of men. An incense smoked at the elaborate altar in a corner, where a deity with a livid black face sat in an ornate shed. The space reeked of a sweaty, metallic odour.

  A narrow stairway took them to a brighter room upstairs. Upon their arrival a beefy, muscled man emerged shirtless from an adjoining room separated by a beaded curtain. The beads rattled loudly in his wake. He was twisting off the cap of a liquor bottle when he saw Hannah.

  “Oh, love!” he exclaimed, miming a dramatic expression of shock. “What is my beautiful dolly doing in a place like this?”

  Arthur observed tension on Hannah’s face. “The usual,” she said. “Immigrant.”

  “Immigrant,” the man parroted, leaning sideways to catch a better look at Arthur and the brilliantine in his hair glistened. “An identity?” He grinned at Hannah and went to a bowl of noodles and took up where he left off. “The usual?” He slurped and chewed. “Or are you paying? You know it has to be official.”

  “What’s official?” Arthur blurted.

  Hannah squeezed his hand, hard. Then smiling forcibly she gestured at him, now addressing the gangster. “Arthur.” She turned to Arthur and said, “Arthur, meet Khun.”

  They shook hands. In Khun’s grin Arthur could see flecks of green vegetables in his teeth. Khun returned to his noodles. “If it isn’t official you have to pay,” he said to Hannah. “There are rules.”

  “A word with you in private?” Hannah passed behind the beaded screen. Khun got up, winked at Arthur and swaggered in after her and flushed out two skinny youths. They slumped into a couch and regarded Arthur scathingly. One of them lit a cigarette. Arthur spared them a wan smile, and looked at the wall of beads that now hid Hannah.

  / / /

  The first words out of Hannah’s mouth when the beads clacked behind Khun were: “You’re just a lackey for the Coterie,” she seethed. “Since when did you start charging for this?”

  Khun tried to hold Hannah by her waist but she slid easily out of his grasp. He awkwardly scratched the side of his head. “I know what you’re doing with him,” he said. “You have to keep it that way before CODEX finds out you’re hiding him.”

  “You know nothing. Official or not lies with me alone.”


  “So you’re going to tag him?” Khun challenged. “Give him one of your kisses? Or have you already given him something more?”

  “That’s none of your business. I come to you and you give him an identity. That’s all.”

  “Not quite.” Khun waved a finger. “Why are you helping him?”

  “I’m keeping him alive until I’m told what to do with him.”

  Khun leaned close to her face and picked a morsel of food from his teeth. “Be careful, love. I’ve seen him, so don’t you get too close to this one.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Don’t test me, dolly.”

  Hannah wrenched herself free and left the room. She drew up beside Arthur and waited for Khun, who parted the curtain and came sauntering out, still picking at his teeth.

  “So what’s the deal?” said Arthur. He sounded thoroughly annoyed now.

  Khun handed him a slip of paper. “Fill up whatever you want your identity to be on this and—” he gave him another slip— “look him up at Orh Kio Tau, he’s the man for the job. Don’t bother going into the kampong. Just ask for him.”

  “Do I owe you anything for this?”

  Khun gave a brassy chortle. “I admire your bluntness, but that depends where we’re going from here.” He glanced at Hannah. “Your friend will get in touch with you.”

  After Arthur completed his part of the forgery Hannah took his arm and dragged him down the stairway without suffering another moment in the rathole. They fled to the street and drew in a welcoming draught of air.

  “What are you paying him with?” asked Arthur.

  “Are you being protective?” she teased. “We barely know each other.”

  Arthur wasn’t smiling. “I don’t need this if it has to cost you something.”

  “You’re an ass if you think I’d sell my body for someone I just met,” said Hannah. “It’s strictly business. It might not seem like it but I run part of it.”