by Tham Cheng-E
A pair of arms enfolds Landon’s chest and drags him through the door and across the driveway. Landon is shoved once more into the back of a car. A sting at the side of his neck, and the hiss of a pneumatic needle follows. The convulsions abate, and a wave of drowsiness steals over him.
His sub-conscious construes the possibility that John has rescued him. But upon shifting his sight he finds Hannah in the driver’s seat, ostensibly enraged over something, and sees her toss an object resembling a pistol onto the seat next to her.
31
OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS
26th July 1938, Tuesday
My name is Anton. It poured today, a harsh, unrelenting torrent that hurt as it drove sideways against my face. I made a successful rendezvous with my “mate”. I met her by the right-hand post of the gateway to Happy World. She was standing under the Mandarin character for “happiness” and clutching her baby swaddled in chequered cloth.
So it was arranged.
The rain in all its fury played cruelly against her. She did not budge and stood drenched with her back turned to it, just so that I could pick her out. I went up to her and said that Vivian sent me. At once she proceeded forth and led the way, rejecting even my offer of an umbrella. I don’t know why Vivian set us up here; there are other registration stations closer to town. By the time I got there my toes were already pickling in my squelchy shoes, all raw and shrivelled from the trek along a flooded Grove Road. I knew my laments were unwarranted. This woman had it worse.
The live birth registration station was a long metal and wood shed at the end of the row of stalls just west of the dance hall. Thankfully it had a roof, and rain drummed loudly upon it. Just before I joined the lines the woman handed her infant to me as if she had been eager to get rid of it. Then she sat on a long wooden bench and held her elbows for warmth.
She didn’t appear in want of interaction or speech. I couldn’t see her face well, except for her fair cheeks and round chin. She wore her hair in a braided tail, but her fringe, loose and frayed, fell in wet, curling locks and obscured much of her face. Vivian had assured me the child was born out of wedlock. No husband, no father, no strings. Just pay and waltz, as with any joget ladies. I don’t know where Vivian found her, nor would I deign to ask. In her profession there are probably hundreds of women like her. It wouldn’t be difficult to find one.
The British lady at the stall smiled at the child I was holding and asked no questions. She had a large, kindly face. Her hair was blonde and wavy. She wore a fuchsia rayon-crepe blouse with winged sleeves that stood out against the drab colours that everyone else wore. I said everything Vivian told me to: date of birth, birthplace, mother’s name. It was a titanic feat for me to have them all memorised.
The live birth was registered without a fuss and I named it Arthur. Only after did I part the swaddle and peer into her wet little face. Couldn’t have been more than six months old. She was grimacing, shuddering slightly perhaps of the chill.
At the end of it I had to give her back. It was a natural recourse. I paid the woman the 80 dollars I’d agreed to, and she precariously cradled the child in one arm and tucked the money between her breasts. She refused my umbrella for the second time. She merely pulled the drenched swaddle over the poor infant and charged into the merciless downpour.
If only this registration were real. If only the child had a father.
I went to Vivian’s home later in the afternoon when the rain thinned, to thank her and tell her that it all went well. I was certain I got the address correct until I saw the empty room. The landlady said she left the night before with a month’s rent paid in advance. Her room was bare, sterile, like a chalkboard scrubbed clean of a fine hand, its traces forever lost.
In the years between us I thought something could’ve blossomed. Now it’s as if we’ve never met. She had become distant, frosty, as if in preparation for her imminent departure to wherever she’s gone.
Perhaps I could’ve done more to keep her.
Count to Arthur 1 of 5,475.
32
OCTOBER 1933
THE RITZ ZION was a glitzy hotel with a grandiose Grecian-Creole façade of columns, cast-iron balconies, shuttered windows and fanlights of wire netting. It offered five royal suites fitted in the finest of imported furnishings, and drew a niche clientele comprising mostly wealthy, married men of status who fancied a fling with their mistresses or a willing taxi-dancer from the Great World Cabaret.
A black market had peddled Serum duplicates for over a century. They were the elixirs of life, and the wealthy had paid fortunes for rogue operatives to deliver them into their blood. They weren’t real Chronomorphs but Transplants, and for them infertility and an immunity to venereal diseases were attractive perks to longevity.
And brothels were where you’d find them.
The chosen Chronomorphs of the Coterie wouldn’t abuse the Serum this way. Only Transplants would display such deficiencies in restraint and discipline. So it was at the Zion where CODEX laid the dragnet for them. And Vivian had always been part of it.
At nightfall the hotel glowed with the light from its rooms, screened behind filmy curtains that offered teasing glimpses of the activities that took place inside. Rows of rickshaws were parked out front. Their pullers—hollow-chested, steely-eyed coolies, crouched along the road-side in wait of customers. From the back of a large Buick a group of chortling Caucasians threw out a bunch of coins. Under the illumination of gas lamps children emerged from the five-foot ways in bundles of rags and skin and went pattering after the motorcar on little bare feet as the coins pelted melodiously onto the street.
Vivian could hear their strident voices from her suite in the Ritz Zion. By an ornate doorway a smooth-faced, gangly man named Song paid a handsome tip to a chambermaid and closed the door behind him. He removed his hat and hung it over a brass hook along the hallway. His hair was fine and white. He smiled at Vivian—his prize for the night.
No one knew how Song made his fortune, and only at the mercantile ball that evening did Vivian learn that he owned 12 plantations in various parts of Malaya and two on this island. They were registered under different names, and an inquiry into them yielded 14 different sets of IDs of different ages. A true rover—and a very clever and elusive one. He’d toggle from one ID to the next; now a clerk and now a plantation owner, and the tactic would last him over a century. Vivian’s records put him at a 110.
He loved life—rather, a life the Serum had conferred upon him, miraculously spared of induced ailments. Vivian had observed how he mingled with tremendous ease at the ball, striking conversations quickly and drawing laughter from whomever he met. He had flirted with at least eight women before he chose her. And Vivian loved such clients because their conceit gave her no remorse. She’d help CODEX kill them all.
They kissed. Vivian undid the collar of her gown—a luxuriant piece of red silk and black lace. Song crossed his fingers behind her slender waist and pulled her close. He looked fondly at her, kissed her again and started slipping his hand past the slit of her skirt.
Vivian seized his wrist, but she was too late.
Song, his face glowing with a youthful, boyish charm, removed his hand, and with it a narrow, six-inch blade stocked in an ivory hilt. Vivian tried to smile through the tension in her face. “So I see,” she said softly. “You detect Serum signatures. You read minds.”
“I read intentions.” Song brushed a finger across the side of Vivian’s face. “More specifically, dangerous ones. It’s my gift. So who do you work for, Vivian?”
“No one,” she teased. “I get assistance from time to time.”
“Ah,” Song lifted an eyebrow. “And who bestows such assistance?”
Vivian knew the perils of situations like this. Song could send the steel into her throat at any moment and the bloodied mess would’ve been nothing more than self-defence. Besides, his immense wealth could buy justice. She would have to act fast, and carefully. His death had to be all-natural. No
wounds, no signs of struggle.
She detected the twitch in Song’s hand that held the blade.
“Who?” Song asked again, his smile turning poisonous.
“A Coterie,” Vivian said, gracing him with one of her own, “of ageless assassins.”
In the wake of her reply Song sprung at her, hurtling the cruel shard of steel towards the side of her neck. Yet his reflexes were but those of the common man. The blade spun off in a whirr of fluid movements, and the next moment Song, his wrist wrung to a distressing angle, was gasping at the spark of pain that weakened his limbs. In snaring the hand Vivian had wisely kept the bones unbroken.
Song’s attempt to swing his free arm at her only brought about a deeper twist and greater pain. He squealed like a pig. With one hand, Vivian flipped open an antiquated leather briefcase. A magnifying screen folded into place, and a keypad, fashioned of brass and ebony, rose and locked itself into place.
“What are you doing?” Song croaked, the pain now wrenching tears from his eyes.
“My job,” Vivian said, her eyes travelling impassively across the screen. “Should’ve been more selective over who you chose to kiss.”
A cybernetic infusion now flowed in the veins of the wretched man, having been transfused from Vivian’s deadly kiss. It mingled with his Serum, embedded itself into his cells. By the tap of a key Vivian had them programmed, and the infusion hitched a ride on the bloodstream and began its dutiful journey towards his racing heart. Song felt the faint prod of pain in the ensuing seconds. His chest numbed as the infarction steadily took hold, and the reality of it drove him to a state of hysteria. As the growing pain compelled him to kneel, Vivian released her grip on him. He folded, clutching his chest and falling to his side. Inside him the cybernetic infusion sealed the arteries until the mounting pressure ruptured them all. Blood decanted from his mouth in ugly splutters, drowning his cries. On it went like a broken fountain, and Vivian watched.
But her triumph wasn’t to last. A signal buzzed. She reached for her ear and tapped on the accessory—a delicate armature of spring steel over her auricle, from which dangled a string of three small pearls.
A male voice cackled. “Constables are entering the lobby right now.”
Vivian breathed a curse. She should’ve been more careful. Song’s ruse, though fruitless, wasn’t intended to work on its own. Beside the balcony Song’s body twitched through its last flicker of life. Before a gilded Victorian mirror she threw on a dark flowing shawl and affixed an ornate fascinator over her head.
Then she retrieved the blade, her briefcase and left the suite.
Four constables, dressed in the khaki uniforms of the colonial police force, clattered past her on their way up the grand curving staircase; the Sikhs in their striped turbans and the Malays in their songkoks. They had batons slung on their black leather belts.
Vivian exited the hotel and strode down the street, veering neither to the left nor right. She took to the alleys and immediately the air turned foul with the stench of rotting food. Her Cuban-heels went clapping loudly across the rutted, broken tarmac, occasionally avoiding the sprawled legs of destitute opium-addicts.
At the Zion the constables, having made the tragic discovery, pattered down the stairs in haste. They conferred with the front desk and learned about the woman who had shared the room with Song—the one in a shawl and fascinator. A bellboy pointed them to the street and out they went.
The alley took Vivian to the northern end of The Great World. An avenue of novelty stalls led south, flanking a central aisle teeming with patrons. In one corner an Indian yogi began swallowing the knives he had been juggling and a Malay fire-eater spat bursts of flames at his audience. Farther on, a shrivelled guru in a white turban charmed a glistening black spitting cobra. At a shooting gallery one could hear the snap of air rifles and the crash of stricken light bulbs.
She plowed through bands of steam that drifted from one side of the street to the other, her cadence deliberate and urgent. She passed rows of stalls blazing with huge cooking fires. Ducks and chickens, hideously waxed and flattened, hung from rafters.
The clatter of boots neared. She ventured a sharp right turn towards the Atlantic cinema. There the stench of the river was heavy against the musk of wooden crates and burlap. She shouldered her way past the movie-going crowds and burrowed through a dodgy little entrance set into a wall plastered in an eclectic patchwork of outdated advertisements and movie posters. A row of date palms lined the building’s front, and above a grand oak-framed entrance The Flamingo flashed in gaudy, pink neon script.
Inside, the roof was high and ribbed in ornate arches of teak. Cast-iron electric lamps hung from them. An octagonal dancehall sat in the centre, lively with dancers. A band in white jackets played on stage.
A bartender at a makeshift cocktail bar watched Vivian navigate the sea of tables, politely rejecting dance offers by regulars and tipsy sailors who knew her to be one of the club’s most sought-after taxi-dancers. At the bar she slipped the briefcase through the table’s skirting, took off her shawl and fascinator and luxuriantly tossed free her pin curls. Amid the glorious notes of Paul Whiteman’s Flamin’ Mamie, Vivian whispered something into the bartender’s ear and waltzed over to the dance floor.
The constables entered and began roving between the tables.
Undaunted, Vivian accepted a dance offer from the nearest patron—a blond, red-faced sailor with a thick chest and a small head. He was wildly flinging his dance coupon in front of her and was so pleased at her acceptance of his offer that he pecked her rudely on the lips. Vivian, eyeing the constables over his hulking shoulders, overlooked the outrage and started jiving him up with rock steps and jitterbugs. It didn’t take long before he started making excessive bodily contact. Then he slid his hands over her bottom and groped, hard.
Vivian hit the roof. She drove a covert fist into the sailor’s sternum and knocked so much wind out of him that his eyes rolled back. He went limp in her arms and his weight almost dragged her to the floor.
The other sailors went wild. They lobbied desperately for Vivian’s attention, thinking that their mate had swooned after drinking too much, rather than from the stealthy blow of a woman. The constables approached, ostensibly drawn to the excitement.
Served by her quick wits she left the floor, pilfered a jacket off the backrest of an empty chair and seized someone from behind the cocktail bar who happened to be carting out a case of liquor. She doused his flat cap off his head and threw the jacket over him.
“Wear this and don’t get fresh with me,” she adjusted the collar of his white shirt and dragged the bewildered man away from the bar.
“I can’t dance,” he muttered.
Vivian did not answer. With tremendous aplomb she swung him out onto the floor just as a tango piece took form. The boorish sailors, unfamiliar with the nascent Argentine genre, retreated grunting and whinging, their places quickly taken by elegantly-dressed couples of superior taste and sophistication. A violin rose in a mysterious prelude to the emerging beats, the accompanying piano sprung alive. The night’s special had begun.
Vivian rested her arms seductively on her partner’s shoulders and leaned her face close to his. “Help me out on this. It will just take a minute.”
“I’ll embarrass you,” said the man.
“What is your name?”
“A…Anton.”
“Anton,” Vivian whispered. “Just move with me.”
On a beat she flew into the tango, twisting to the left and right before stumbling forward in a cue for him to hold her close. He did, albeit with such diffidence that she had to forcibly wrap his arm around her waist.
The commencement of a chorus melody sent them whirling into a reverse embrace, which Vivian then developed expertly into a promenade saunter with Anton in tow. They reached one end of the floor and Vivian spun about. She positioned Anton stiffly like a tea kettle, lifted his arms in a flaring posture and tugged at them to coordinate a parallel wa
lk. Anton took the cue but not without such effort that made him perspire. His arms began to sag.
“You’re a teapot, Anton,” said Vivian. “Keep the spout up.”
She attempted a few stylistic boleos, a half-giro, then dragged Anton across the floor in a doble frente—a quick march with the lady slightly ahead. She swivelled, a little too violently for Anton’s standards. Her hair flew wild, and from them wafted a sensuous scent.
“Now walk forward six steps and I’ll follow,” Vivian instructed in a whisper. Anton complied and paced forth, seemingly emboldened by a desire to impress his fascinating dance partner. At the end of it Vivian unexpectedly yanked herself back, causing him to lurch forward and reach for her.
“I said six steps,” she chided through a frozen smile.
Before Anton could apologise, Vivian recovered from the deliberate move and inserted a foot between his legs and orchestrated a rather convincing side step by rapping them to the left and right. She then lifted Anton’s arm high and had him spin her around—or rather, she spun herself and dropped back into his arms. There she began rocking to a slow cadence. Anton tried to follow but fell so hopelessly out of sync that she rolled her eyes and flung herself into another double-timed promenade walk down the floor.
At the far end of the floor she pulled him into a close embrace, lifted a knee and wrapped her leg around Anton’s in execution of a caress. Anton, suddenly self-conscious, brought his legs together.
“I’m shining my shoes,” Vivian snapped. “Open them!”
Anton put out his leg and froze in place like a mannequin. Vivian drew up to him, and pressed her cheek against his. Over his shoulders Vivian observed the constables. The bartender pointed them to a door and they took the bait, believing that their suspect had fled through the kitchen and back to the streets.