Now That It's Over

by O Thiam Chin

  Wei Xiang checks the time again. Perhaps he should wait for her to come back so that they can have breakfast together at the hotel café. He remembers the porter telling them, when they checked in yesterday, that the continental buffet breakfast was available until ten o’clock. He changes out of his sleeping attire—singlet and boxer shorts—into a white T-shirt and Bermudas, then lies back on the bed. He stares up at the ceiling and recalls their lovemaking the night before: his mouth on Ai Ling’s engorged nipples, the fleshy swells of her breasts, her stifled groans as he moved within her. His skin tingles from the remembered pleasure, and an erection stirs in his shorts. He reaches in and gives his cock a few tugs, then stops himself. This can wait; it is still early.

  Even with the windows closed and curtains drawn, Wei Xiang can still hear the sounds of the town coming through, soft and muffled. He thinks of the places they will go to later; Ai Ling has already planned a long day packed with activities and sightseeing. They only managed to check out Phuket’s shopping district yesterday after arriving from the airport, with a trip to its wet market and bazaar, and ended their day with dinner at a beachfront restaurant showcasing a panoramic view of the sea. Wei Xiang reaches for the printout of the itinerary on the bedside table; under one column, Ai Ling has listed some restaurants and cafés, and directions to get to them. She has also printed out a map of Phuket Island and marked down these eateries, highlighting each with a different colour for different days. So typical of Ai Ling, to plan everything down to the smallest detail.

  The night before, after dinner, they took a walk along the beach, and stopped at a clearing of rocks on the shore. He noticed the worried look on her face, but when he tried to cajole her into telling him what she was thinking, she became taciturn, even evasive. Her moods can sometimes turn dark, as he has learnt over seven years of marriage, and leave her distant and distracted for days on end, even weeks. Each time she slips into this state, she pushes away from him, retreating into a secret place inside her to which he does not have access; it always pains him to think that his wife does not trust him enough to share whatever is going on in her life. He does not want his marriage to slip into that of his parents’, one that was virulent, destructive.

  Even when he was just a young boy, Wei Xiang could clearly sense his parents’ profound unhappiness, flinching at the hurtful words they constantly hurled at each other. His parents’ lives had drifted apart, taking separate paths, until they were practically strangers living under the same roof. For a long time, Wei Xiang could not understand the causes behind his parents’ frequent fights, and where all of it would eventually lead. All he can remember is the fear that ate away at him, that the world was no longer stable and at any time would collapse. He carried this fear as a warning to himself, an old wound which he kept scratching.

  Wei Xiang took it upon himself to do whatever he could to keep his family together. Without any prompting, he cleaned his room, put away his shoes neatly in the cupboard, washed his eating utensils, did his homework, folded his clothes, showered and ate and slept at the same time every day, and nailed down his daily routine into exactness and precision. He listened to his parents, obeyed their instructions, came home on time, did not ask to watch television, kept to the rules (and made some of his own), helped out his mother with the housework and went out on errands to buy newspapers or cigarettes for his father or a bottle of soy sauce for his mother. He passed his tests and examinations with flying colours, and received praise from all his teachers for his results in the year-end assessments. He performed as the lead in the school play in Primary Six, which his parents attended together; they even clapped for him. He kept everything in check and in order, and firmly believed that if he did everything perfectly, down to the tee, nothing would ever go wrong, not in his life or in his parents’.

  And yet, the fights persisted, worsening in severity and frequency; Wei Xiang would hold himself responsible, believing that his actions, or inactions, were to blame, that he had not done the right thing at the right time—an unseen and unknown catalyst that had sparked off yet another chain of regrettable events. And he would redouble his efforts, adhering even more staunchly to his quest for perfection; he would not give in to negative thoughts, thoughts he would never share with his parents in any case. His faith in his own actions always depended on this belief, and he never swayed from it, even in adulthood.

  Later, of course, he came to know the reason for the collapse of his parents’ marriage, a reason that caught him completely by surprise: the death of a brother he never knew. One night when he was in his early twenties, his father told him everything in a state of drunkenness: when Wei Xiang was seven, and still an only child, his mother went away for two months to stay at her sister’s to recuperate from a miscarriage. Alternating periods of sadness and neediness and silence ensued after his mother came back home, strange baffling episodes in which she would pull Wei Xiang into a hug as easily as she would push him aside or ask him to stay in his room and do as he was told. This had also been the beginning of the long stretches of fights that took place between his parents, their angry voices penetrating the walls of his room.

  Wei Xiang was stunned by the news, and by the fact that he had been kept in the dark for such a long time, and at the same time he was intrigued by this secret part of their family history. He wondered how his parents had worked in tandem, through the long years, to keep any hint of the death from him. He felt betrayed by the secrecy that had led to nothing but pain for all of them.

  Yet, even the birth of Wei Xiang’s younger brother, two years after the death of the unknown brother, did little to obviate what was ultimately the end of the marriage. His parents had hoped that the new son would take on whatever the dead son could not, but this was an unfair expectation, a false hope. The shadow of death loomed over the family, even if Wei Xiang and his younger brother were never consciously aware of it.

  “But still, we tried, we really did,” his father slurred as he peered into Wei Xiang’s face, seeking some sort of penance, perhaps even forgiveness. Wei Xiang turned away, not knowing what to say.

  In the end, Wei Xiang’s mother was the one who decided on the divorce, which was finalised when Wei Xiang was seventeen, in his first year in junior college. His parents sat him and his younger brother down to break the news to them, and he asked all the questions that could be asked about the causes and outcomes, but his parents provided only what he needed to know, and nothing more. Wei Xiang was furious at this obfuscation, but was even angrier with himself for not being able to forestall the divorce, for his faltering faith in his own beliefs and actions.

  After signing the papers, his mother migrated to Hong Kong, where one of her sisters was living, and within two years she was romantically involved with a man who owned a chain of watch shops. Always the dutiful son, Wei Xiang kept in contact with his mother, and took two trips every year that his mother paid for, visits in which Wei Xiang took pains to be as obliging and accommodating as he could, to present his best self to his mother. But when she invited him to attend her wedding, a simple church affair followed by a reception, Wei Xiang politely declined, citing his year-end examinations.

  After a brief period of uncertainty and adjustment, Wei Xiang and his brother continued on with their lives in Singapore. Wei Xiang fought hard to get back the life he had before, to achieve the sense of balance and control that had been hugely unsettled by his parents’ break-up, and to this end he devoted himself, sticking to his routine and habits with a doggedness that left little to chance.

  His father, on the other hand, became a pale shade of the man he was before the divorce, cautious in his ways, defensive and prone to anxiety attacks. So different from the man that Wei Xiang grew up with: wiry, greasy-haired, bent over the nightly Chinese newspaper, his plastic-framed thick-lens spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose; dozing on the sofa after a meal, snoring like a drill; leaving for work, his shoulder blades sharp and visible under his short-sleeved sh
irt. His father had worked as a clerk in a heavy machinery firm that loaned out tractors, digging rigs and lifting cranes on long-term lease to construction and building companies, until he was retrenched when the company had to downsize. He never found a permanent job after that, making do with odd jobs here and there to support the family. Apart from his drinking—he now limits himself to two bottles of Tiger Beer daily—Wei Xiang’s father has little comfort or enjoyment in life, defeated, buckled by the forces of life.

  These impressions of his own father have affected his thoughts on becoming one himself. He told Ai Ling more than once of his decision to delay their parenthood after they were married, and he knew Ai Ling silently took heed of it, though he could see it hurt her and conflicted with her growing desire to be a mother. He has softened his stance in the last two years, after seeing how affected Ai Ling was when one of the kids from the childcare centre went missing; it was clear how much she denied herself the pain of this loss, the disappearance of a boy she had grown very fond of.

  Wrapped in the silence of the hotel room, Wei Xiang feels something constrict in his chest, an imperceptible ache that spreads across his body. He turns to face Ai Ling’s side of the bed again and runs his hand over the pillow. He plucks a strand of her hair and tosses it aside, then notes that half an hour has passed while he was daydreaming. What is taking her so long? A random image from the dream comes to him then—the sorrowful expression on Ai Ling’s face, her eyes drilling into him, before she plunged into the water after the boy, and disappeared.

  Wei Xiang leaps up from the bed, suddenly uneasy. A wave of fear and nausea passes through him. Muted sunlight filters through the curtains. He opens the glass-paned door, steps out onto the balcony, and finally sees the new world outside the hotel room.

  5

  CHEE SENG

  When I open my eyes, the world around me is shadows, and it takes a long time before they start to rearrange themselves into shapes and dimensions, shades and colours. The sounds, and then the smells, begin to make themselves known, little by little, as my mind struggles to make sense of these new, strange sensations. Slight movements out of the corner of my eye: a figure bent over a soot-blackened stove, swathed in layers of rags, stirring a pot, somewhat familiar. Steam rising up from the pot shrouds the face.

  I shove away the dusty blanket, and pain shoots through my arms. I attempt to push my body upright and fail; I fall back on the bed, drained. The figure at the stove does not turn around or show any sign of noticing me; it keeps stirring the pot. The smell of garlic and eucalyptus hangs in the air, prickling my senses. My stomach rumbles with hunger, and then I remember the ceramic bowl, the bitter concoction.

  Nearby are a small wooden table and two benches; on the table is a bundle of tiny yellow flowers with red berries—herbs?—and a water jug. At the ankle-high threshold of the doorway, two brownish-grey hens are clucking and pecking, sneaking glances into the hut. Morning light reaches in to expose the grainy texture of the cement floor. Near the far wall, three wooden chests are stacked on top of one another according to size. The dark figure trudges towards a latticed larder, and from one of the compartments takes out a glass jar. Removing its cover, it sprinkles the contents into the pot with two light shakes and continues to stir it with the ladle. Then turning around, it finally acknowledges my presence with a steady gaze.

  I have a hard time deciphering the face looking at me. With a scarf covering the hair and deeply creased lines around the eyes and lips, the face looks ancient, otherworldly, like a stone carving that has weathered seasons of rain and sun. The eyes, however, set deep within the folds of wrinkled skin, beam with a sagacious, ageless intensity, the eyes of a cat in the dark. As the figure steps towards me, I notice that one of the eyes is actually a glass eye, slightly larger, unmoving in the socket; the other is assessing me closely.

  It is an old woman.

  Putting the ladle down on the wooden table, she pours some water into a cup and brings it to me. I drink it very slowly, but want more. The old woman brings the jug over and fills the cup again. I drain it. After I finish, she points to the boiling pot on the stove. She places the jug on a stool beside the bed, then goes over and ladles the contents of the pot into an earthenware bowl, the steam rising visibly. It is a thick broth, almost gruel-like, rich with herbal spiciness; I scald the tip of my tongue in my haste, and it leaves an acrid aftertaste in my mouth and a sizzle on my chapped lips. Holding the bowl, the old woman encourages me to eat more. It takes a long time to finish it all; by the time I’m forcing the last granular dregs into my mouth, the soup has turned cold. I lie back down; a warm, effervescent sensation infuses my insides, spreading out to the rest of my body. Once again, I feel drowsy, the irresistible pull of sleep dragging me under. The soft, nearly incorporeal touches of the old woman as she arranges the blanket around me and smoothens out my hair come to me as if from a distant place.

  The next time I wake, the old woman is nowhere in sight. How long have I slept? A few hours, a day? There is no clock to tell the time. How long since I was carried off by the waves? I try to recall something else—anything—but my memories are all fuzzy and loose, untethered to any semblance of reality. I slowly sit up on the bed, some of my strength returned, and listen to the surroundings. Apart from the clucking of the chickens outside, there is hardly any other sound. At the foot of the bed are my shirt and jeans, dried out and stiff like pieces of a discarded husk. The old woman has dressed me in layers of dun-coloured robes, held together with frog buttons. Though it is warm, I can’t bring myself to shed the layers.

  The cement floor is cool to the touch. I try to stand and the blood rushes from my head; I waver unsteadily, my knees almost buckling, as though the earth is shaking under my feet. Once the moment has passed, I hobble towards the doorway in small, tottering steps. The soles of my feet are raw and tender. Narrowing my eyes against the light, I look out, resting my shoulder against the wooden doorframe.

  Outside the hut is a small, compact courtyard, bordered on one side with ramshackle wire cages with missing or unhinged doors, and on another side by a tidy garden plot, its perimeter marked out with trails of stones and pebbles, and a brick well in one corner. Budding knots of yellow flowers bloom in the garden, along with hanging fruits of berries, green limes and chillies. The raked soil looks freshly turned over; a brood of chickens prances and pecks on the ground beside it, seemingly aware of the boundary of the garden, taking care not to step into it. A stone-cobbled path, perhaps smoothened by years of footsteps, leads out of the courtyard and into a thick grove of trees about fifteen metres away. Beyond that, the hills rise and dip in smooth undulations, stretching to the distant coast.

  The old woman is sweeping the fallen leaves with a short rattan broom into the thick undergrowth of shrubs bordering the compound of the hut, stopping from time to time to pluck weeds from the ground. Despite her apparent advanced age, her strength is evident in the manner in which she is able to easily yank out the weeds, the roots still clutching clumps of damp soil. Across the sloping hills, the sun is descending, drenching the sky in yellow, purple and orange. The old woman continues to work, undisturbed, oblivious to my presence. I sit near the threshold in the shade of the hanging eave of the hut—standing has become unbearable—and watch her move across the courtyard, finishing her sweeping, then tending to the garden and herding the chickens back into the cages. She surveys the whole courtyard and walks to the brick well; she removes the wooden cover, picks up a small bucket attached with a rope to the side of the well, and throws it in. A hollow sound echoes from the mouth of the well, a watery slap. With a few tugs, the bucket reappears, water overflowing the brim. She splashes the dry, hard ground of the courtyard with the water, then repeats the motion. The water spreads across the cracked surface in dark, rapidly moving tentacles, until the whole ground glistens like a shining coat of oil. From somewhere deep in the forest, a melancholic howl pierces the air.

  The old woman unties the rope from i
ts metal handle, hefts the bucket of water and walks towards the hut, nodding at me as she crosses the threshold; her shrunken, furrowed feet are caked with grains of wet soil. I follow her inside.

  She empties the water into two large earthenware jars and a cooking pot on the stove. With a quick strike of a matchstick, she lights a handful of dried chaff and shoves it into the hole of the stove, provoking the flames with a straw fan. Flickering orange embers glow from within. She starts to cook, taking out rice, eggs, cloves of garlic and stalks of leafy vegetables from the larder, and seasons the food with sauces taken from bottles coated with a sticky layer of grease. The smell of cooking conjures up fragmented memories of my childhood, of time spent in the kitchen watching my mother prepare dinners, a miasma of smells that lingered in the air long after the meals were done and the dishes put away.

  The old woman performs the task briskly, knowing exactly when to add a pinch of salt or a dash of sauce, and how long to keep the lid on the pot to allow the soup to simmer. She does not ask for my help, though she throws pithy glances at me every so often. Sitting at the wooden table, I rest my cheek on my arm and drift in and out of sleep.

  My dream is a broken reel of images and sounds: random faces, the terrible sound of waves crashing in my ears, a deluge of noises that shatter the silence. Amongst the images, I catch a glimpse of Cody’s face, staring into mine, expressionless, vanishing and then appearing again. His mouth moves, but nothing comes forth. I reach for him, but he is pulling away, receding farther and farther. I start to shout—in the dream?—and suddenly feel a firm pressure on my shoulder, shaking me, and I leap back into wakefulness with a gasp. The old woman is standing over me, watching me intently. She gives me a cup of water, puts her hand on my forehead, and motions to me to lie down on the bed. I fumble my way to the bed and collapse into it. Though I’m bone tired, I try to keep myself awake this time, afraid to slip back into my dream.