by Tham Cheng-E
“Thank you,” says the woman, lowering herself into a velvet couch by the window.
“Can I get you anything?” says Aldred.
The woman looks over a menu board above the counter. “A mocha, please. Just iced, not blended.”
“Anything for the little lady?” Aldred nods at the young girl, who beams at the attention. “We’ve got very good milkshakes.”
“Cranberry juice?” the woman takes her eyes off a chiller at the back. “She doesn’t take lactose very well.”
“Coming right up.”
Aldred returns and places the drinks carefully on coasters and slides the woman a receipt. The woman silently watches his every movement as if in review of his service skills, and just as he is about to leave them she stops him. “Is your name Landon by any chance?”
Aldred’s heart jumps. “Well…yes…”
“I was wondering if we could speak.” She gestures at the empty couch opposite her.
After conferring briefly with his manager Aldred returns to her in a stiff, awkward gait and settles himself carefully into the couch.
The woman sips through a straw and stirs the mocha with it. “It’s delicious.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m Ginn.” Her hand shoots out a second later. “John’s wife.”
Aldred takes it and realises she’s probably every bit as awkward as he is. He is relieved that she did not introduce herself as “John’s widow”.
“This is Fanny, our daughter.”
Aldred acknowledges the young girl with a nod, and in response she bashfully conceals her face behind the novel.
“My name is Aldred now, if you know what I mean.”
Ginn smiles politely. “Doesn’t sound like a common name.”
“It’s an old name,” says Aldred. “My real name…my first.”
Their conversation stalls. Ginn gives another polite smile and averts her eyes. Aldred goes on chewing his lower lip until he decides that it is he who has to break the ice. “I was hoping I could do something for you,” he confesses.
“You have.” Ginn lifts her head, suddenly finding it easier to meet his gaze. “It’s been almost a year and Fanny is responding very well to—whatever you’ve given her.”
Aldred couldn’t help but break into a smile. “I’m so happy to hear that. She’s quite a survivor.”
“Headstrong and a handful. Takes after her father.”
When Aldred turns to Fanny he finds her grinning. “I really appreciate you coming here to tell me this,” he says to Ginn.
“Oh yes,” Ginn digs into her bag and retrieves a pair of jangling dogtags and a small silver cross threaded in a black string, and presses them into his hand in a way that he could not refuse. “John wants you to have this. It’s in his will to give it to his last living client.”
Aldred’s lip trembles. “But I can’t…he ought to be giving y—”
Ginn lays her hand over Aldred’s. “He’s left us with enough.”
Aldred is staring so hard at the gift that he fails to notice how Fanny has been observing him over the top edge of her novel.
“What are you going to do about the Serum?” he asks.
“Remove it when it’s time, once Fanny’s healed,” says Ginn. “I believe mortality was put in place for a purpose. I don’t intend to go against that.”
Aldred nods and closes his fingers over John’s gift.
Ginn checks her watch. “We must go. Fanny’s due for her checkup.” She takes the receipt with the intention of paying for the drinks but Aldred stops her.
“I’m buying.”
He accompanies them to the car and stows the stroller at the back while Ginn straps Fanny into the rear seat. They shake hands and Aldred lingers by the window. “I wish there was something more I could do,” says he.
“Remember John for who he was.” Ginn squints to a dusty gust of wind. Then turning over her shoulder she addresses Fanny, “Say bye-bye to Uncle Landon.”
Fanny waves and smiles, and in it Aldred sees gratitude. The car leaves the lot and Aldred watches it until it cruises down the narrow street and out of sight. He fingers the gift in his hand and in a moment’s thought, slings it over his head.
He returns to the café and clears Ginn’s table. When he dumps the tray of empty glasses on the countertop a colleague—a skinny young lady with a purple fringe—tosses him a napkin as she passes. “Must’ve made an impression.”
At first Aldred thinks little of it. But when he takes the napkin a flash of déjà vu leaps at him. His heart flutters. He parts the folded napkin and finds two lines of classic slanted script written in a neat hand:
To your Barista,
If I get a second shot at life, I’d like to bake a sugar cake with you.
Aldred crashes through a door and almost smashes it against the adjacent wall.
Hannah.
He can’t explain otherwise. It had to be John’s weapon; she must have made the switch. There could be no other plausible explanation.
In fact there mustn’t be.
He runs back to the street and finds it empty as ever. He inspects every parked car and races down a good length of the sidewalk until his chest burns and his veins pump acid. He strains his neck and looks wildly about, knowing it isn’t going to do any good.
Absently, he slips his hand into his pocket and retrieves a card that reads Odds & Ends Antiques & Collectables.
John had been right about the Transfusion.
He could make the call, take her to see Thaddeus, get her fixed. And one day, they might find themselves a cosy little home. They would hear children bickering over the sugar cake. And as the children nap they would have tea—tea for two.
And they would be happy.
And yes, he remembers the code.
Iftahya Simsim.
EPILOGUE
JUNE 1844
QARA BUDANG TABUNAI was a compact, desiccated little man of exceptional strength. But to his memory the last gainful employment of it was at the battle of Taka Island—five centuries earlier. He was built like a rock, with short, thick arms and large, powerful hands. His name meant Great Bear, and his hairless pate, darkened by decades of sun, sparkled with beads of sweat. He wasn’t used to the tropics, and the bustle of merchant activity at the mouth of the river imbued confusion that drove at his temper.
It told him how much he had come to loathe the city.
From a crouching, skeletal hawker he bought himself and his wife a mango each. The hawker skinned it for them, and its honeyed sweetness refreshed them. Through a brief, halting conversation with the hawker he learnt that the vast agglomeration of skiffs by the river banks were called sampans in the native tongue, and that they were trading textiles and lucrative spices like nutmeg and turmeric, and that the grey-bricked ramparts with the thirty-two pounders were a part of a fort they named Fullerton.
It had been built over the Stone that marked the chamber.
And it was where Origen had gone in the past hour.
At last, in the distant street, by a seawall of sandstone and lime mortar, a tall figure emerged, clothed in the hooded robe of a monastic monk. It was Origen, trudging unhurriedly amongst the natives, a wide-rimmed hat shadowing his fair and pearly face, and still it gleamed white against the potpourri of dusky races around him.
“The chamber remains, Great Bear.” Origen arrived and gave him a slight, rigid bow. “But the Key has been taken.”
“So the governor knows,” said Great Bear.
“Only what has been revealed,” said Origen. “They would not be expecting a second Key.” He hands him a scroll sealed in an official’s signet. “Mister Wren had procured the plot on high ground. Its ascent is shallow, yet the natives call it Mount Harriet.”
“Then it is a prominent peak.”
“A humble plot nonetheless, but I trust it is adequate.”
“I care little for size, Origen. It has to be fertile.”
“I understand.”
They moved, weaving amongst labourers, streetwalkers and rickshaws as a single, conspicuous troupe. Origen in a robe, Great Bear still in the old haori he wore onto the ship that bore them to this strange island. Beside them his wife draped a fraying shawl over her cotton kimono. Great Bear wasn’t Japanese, but on this island few would be discerning.
Battery Road took them away from the fort and led them north. Along the way they passed ageing go-downs roofed in terracotta and squat merchant houses of crumbly plaster. By the five-foot ways, and away from streams of traversing coolies, youths panhandled, some tapping their tin cans on the ground and others lazing in a half-stupor, waiting for the day’s end. Great Bear knew of wretches like them—found in almost every inhabited land, bereft of identities yet belonging closely to the one of their collective. In his lifetimes he had seen too many. But one drew his sympathy.
A child with a small, dirt-smeared face. Beneath the filth Great Bear saw a peculiar ethnicity he couldn’t place. He watched the large, sienna pupils and they watched him back. Inwardly he mourned over the thin, gnarled limbs, a head that appeared much too heavy for its veiny, fragile neck. The child didn’t rap his can like the others, but sat slumped against a pillar, weakened, spent, and inured of suffering. He was little: five years old at most, Great Bear reckoned, far too young to even forage or swindle like the older ones.
Great Bear went over, exuding such mysterious authority that the other panhandlers parted and gave him passage. He picked up the child and found him limp as a corpse. The child did not resist but put his head on Great Bear’s thick shoulder, and there it remained.
The wife stroked the child’s hair. “As a surrogate?” she asked in Japanese.
“As a son,” said Great Bear.
“But the Serum—”
“In time, Origen will liberate me from it.” Great Bear patted the child, his large hand stretching over the child’s back. “The depraved man is never meant to live that long.”
“You will die.”
“And so we shall, together, when you are well in years.” Great Bear turned smilingly to her. “Yet our child will grow. And by the Lord’s grace he will heal and save.”
An ugly voice sullied their conversation. A merchant, dressed in silk and holding a fan, came strutting from the unlit bowels of a granary that stocked barley and rice. With unabashed honesty he declared ownership over the panhandlers, including the enfeebled child on Great Bear’s shoulders.
“I will buy him then,” said Great Bear, in heavily-accented Mandarin.
“It depends on what you will give for him.”
Great Bear took out the rest of his money while Origen looked on beside him, palpably distressed, though the frigidity of his expression did not reveal it. It was a bag of copper coins and two mercantile banknotes amounting to ten dollars.
The merchant spat, scoffed at the paltry sum in a derisive chuckle. “I’d plump him up for a few more years and sell him as a slave for fifty dollars.”
“He won’t last another week.” Great Bear said.
“That ring in your hand.” The merchant slapped his fan on a palm and pointed with it to Great Bear’s left hand. “It is gold, isn’t it?”
It had once belonged to Samagar, a friend and a great Mongol general. A gift of the highest order. “Gold, it is,” Great Bear answered. “The purest.”
“That makes up the price.” The merchant flaunted more gold through his grin.
To his wife’s horrified gasp Great Bear slid it off his finger and flicked it over. The merchant was quick to snatch it from the air, and in the span of it Great Bear was already walking away with the child on his back. The merchant tried it on, and found that it only fitted the thumb. He laughed—a cackling stutter, “You have such thick fingers!”
A flash of pain sent him reaching for his hand. The ring seemed to have suddenly shrunk, the metal now folding over upon itself, collapsing into a dense nub over the thumb and snapping it clean off—skin, bones and all. The deranged scream gathered a crowd, and the woman looked at her husband with fear in her eyes.
“All matter is but a composition of very small particles,” he said. “Manipulate them and you manipulate a great deal of energy in ways you never imagined.
“Witchcraft, Sayuri,” he assured to an amused twitch of an eyebrow.
/ / /
A trail in the forest took them to a clearing. At a corner there was a humble dwelling; its walls and roof woven of attap palm. To the south they saw the straits, speckled with hundreds of boats with their rolled masts. Great Bear clawed a handful of soil, kneaded it in his fingers and brought it to his nose.
“It is fertile ground.” He lifted his eyes approvingly to the full measure of Origen’s height. “This Harriet will give us life in the years to come.”
Origen bowed. “Thank the Lord.”
By nightfall Origen had left them and returned to the town. Under the cover of darkness and in a freshly-dug pit no less than six feet deep, Great Bear laid down a chest of lead no larger than a jewellery box. In the light of his torch he looked at it for one last time and compacted the earth over it.
Behind him their dwelling glowed in candlelight, and on a straw mat the young boy drowsed, his colour having returned after a meal of roast and warmed milk. The woman, her hair now unbound and flowing in a foreign, scented breeze, came outside and sat down beside Great Bear. “What would you name him?” she asked.
“Aldred,” he answered without delay, looking at the sky.
“After him?”
“After him.”
She nuzzled closer. “Have you ever loved life, Great Bear?”
“Only when I started living it for someone else.” He reached over and took her hand. “And I’m loving it very much right now, Sayuri.”
On their wicker seats they reclined, exhaling, and watched the stars together.
Acknowledgements
IN 1852 CAPTAIN Henry Keppel recorded in his journal an incident of a young Malayan boy who was attacked by a man-eating tiger and subsequently rescued by the two buffaloes which he was herding. One of the buffaloes pursued the tiger into the jungle while the other kept watch over the wounded boy, though the journal entry did not mention if the boy lived.
In this story, I made sure he did.
Many of the insights that composed the historical scenes were inspired by various exemplary sources, without which the vagaries of an intriguing past would have slipped away unnoticed. I thank Iain Manley and Michael Wise for their rare and invaluable compilations. Tan Kok Yang for his work on Queenstown. Loh Kah Seng for his vivid chronicle of the Bukit Ho Swee fire. Edwin A. Brown and Mary Brown for their meticulous documentation of the Sepoy Mutiny. The National Library Board and Singapore Press Holdings for their archives and resources.
An English folk song appears in Chapter 40, titled The Poor Murdered Woman by Leslie Nelson-Burns. As you might have guessed, the recurring lyrics that appear throughout this novel belonged to Tea for Two by Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar.
Heartfelt thanks to my only brother, who bore the agony of reading my formative works which I still keep hidden. His little murmurs of encouragement held such strength. Edmund Wee and his team at Epigram Books for believing enough in the work to put it into print. Jason Erik Lundberg and JY Yang, my editors, who have been instrumental in polishing the work to a high gloss. Above all, my utmost gratitude to my wife and first-reader, Sandra, who saw through with me every step in the production of this novel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tham Cheng-E is an architect who also writes about the special needs community for the online magazine Special Seeds, and maintains a family blog on parenting and Down syndrome. Surrogate Protocol is his first novel.
WINNER OF THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
The Gatekeeper
NURALIAH NORASID
Young medusa Ria turns an entire village of innocents to stone with her gaze. She flees with her older sister for the underground city of Nelroote, wher
e Manticura’s quasi-fantastical sapient races—Scereans, Tuyuns, Feleenese, Cayanese—live on the margins. There she takes up her role as gatekeeper, protecting the city from threats, Human or otherwise.
Decades later, Manticura is now a modern urban city-state, and Eedric Shuen is bored with his privileged life. He stumbles upon the entrance to Nelroote and encounters Ria, who has spent nearly half a century in solitude. As their friendship blossoms, external whispers of the medusa sisters threaten to spark a chain of events that will throw Nelroote and its inhabitants into imminent danger.
Available online at www.epigrambooks.sg
FINALIST FOR THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
Fox Fire Girl
O THIAM CHIN
Derrick can’t believe his luck when he rekindles a romance with ex-girlfriend Yifan. But Yifan remains aloof and distant. She confides to Derrick that in her hometown of Ipoh, she discovered that she is actually a fox spirit with mystical powers.
But Derrick isn’t the only person who has fallen under Yifan’s spell. Unbeknownst to him, Tien Chen, a man with an unhealthy obsession with fire, has also been dating her. When Tien Chen eventually confronts Yifan about her infidelity, she tells him a story about her childhood in Ipoh to explain her actions. But is Yifan really the person she claims to be?
Available online at www.epigrambooks.sg
FINALIST FOR THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
State of Emergency
JEREMY TIANG
A woman finds herself questioned for a conspiracy she did not take part in. A son flees to London to escape from a father, wracked by betrayal. A journalist seeks to uncover the truth of the place she once called home. A young wife leaves her husband and children behind to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya.