by O Thiam Chin
She had to be mindful of avoiding Daniel for the next two days.
Ai Ling picked up Beloved and attempted to read. She had not been able to get through two pages since arriving in Cha Am, and her failure to do so again did not surprise her. It might have been the wrong book to bring along. Creeping into the bed and lying on the cool bedsheet, Ai Ling imagined herself floating on the surface of a river, gliding away. She closed her eyes; the image of the young boy surfaced, along with the memory of the infant shoes sinking into the darkness of a pond. It had been many years since her miscarriage, but the sudden memory gripped her hard. She did not suppress it; instead she allowed it to pull others out of the pit of her subconscious. She saw herself at the hospital, standing by the roadside vomiting, the blood coming out of her that never seemed to stop. Her stomach ached now as if it, too, were recollecting the past, and she cringed with the imaginary pain.
If she’d had the child that she actually lost, would it be the same age as the boy she saw that morning? Ai Ling shook her head roughly, wanting to dislodge herself from the path that the thought was leading her towards, unwilling to know what was at the end of it. She opened her eyes and looked out the windows; the sky had changed to a dark sheet of grey, a thunderstorm breaking out in the distance, moving inland.
The heavy rain did not let up till the early evening. Ai Ling stayed in her room, dozing in and out of sleep, her mind groggy with half-remembered dreams. Her body felt dull, sluggish, as if she were swathed with several layers of heavy clothes. Beloved lay beside her, its pages curled from the humidity, the spine loosely holding the novel together, although one of the pages had escaped its grasp. She got up to drink from the tap in the toilet a few times, and to brush her hair. In the harsh light, her face looked tired, the lines around her eyes and mouth more pronounced. She put on another application of moisturiser.
Standing at the windows, Ai Ling watched the progress of the rain, from the initial roars of the thunder to the riotous downpour, a gleaming curtain of silver needles. The sea had come to life with the arrival of the storm, roused by its own rage, the waves whipped into a frenzy, spiky white crests that pierced the surface of the water. The streets were empty. Nothing moved except for the rain and the sea.
During one of her naps, Ai Ling heard a soft knock on the door, which, in her semi-conscious state, she had thought was the pelting of rain on the windows. She did not move to answer it. It could be the hotel concierge or Daniel, but Ai Ling did not care. She waited for the person behind the door to move away, for silence to return to the room.
She got out of bed when she could sleep no more. She showered, put on a loose dress, and stepped out of the room. The rain had died down to a ghostly drizzle, so faint that, as she stood under the hotel’s front awning, she barely felt it on her skin, only a light tingling. The sky was a deep blue that softened in degrees as it met the horizon. The street lights stood against the dusk like solitary figures, beaming out their islands of yellow rays. Ai Ling had only taken a few steps when she felt a shadow looming over her. She turned to see Daniel, holding an umbrella.
“Where were you the whole afternoon? I couldn’t find you.”
“I was sleeping.”
“You sleep very soundly. Maybe that’s why you didn’t hear the knocking.”
They laughed, and started to walk in the direction of the restaurant where they’d had dinner the night before. With Ai Ling’s assent, Daniel ordered the same dishes as before, along with a plate of fried prawn cakes. He assaulted her with questions once again, and Ai Ling answered them politely. After dinner, he asked whether she was interested in walking along the beach—the weather was cool after the rain—but she declined. As they headed back to the hotel, the man brushed his hand against Ai Ling’s, and when she did not move away or shy from it, he took hold of her hand. As they strolled down the street, Ai Ling wondered how they looked to the other passers-by, who might mistake them for a couple enjoying an evening walk, talking about the quiet, intimate affairs of their lives, and she could not help but imagine the life she could have with this stranger. She wondered whether Daniel wanted children—a boy or a girl, or both. She did not skimp on any detail that would make this imagined life better or richer or more satisfying than the one she had.
Back at the hotel, Daniel asked Ai Ling whether she was up for a drink at the bar. She hesitated, then shook her head. Daniel looked puzzled, thrown off his axis, unable to reconcile what had preceded—a good meal together, the conversation, the hand-holding—with Ai Ling’s returning taciturn behaviour. Not knowing how to pull out of the situation, she stretched upwards and kissed him lightly on the cheek. His eyes brightened fleetingly with a flare of hope, but she had already extricated herself, and was moving towards the staircase. She heard Daniel calling out to her, but she did not turn around.
In her room, Ai Ling sat on the sofa and gazed out the windows. When her mind had finally settled into its usual flow, she got up and called the reception from the bedside phone, informing them that she would be checking out in the morning and enquiring about the coach schedule back to Bangkok. Done with the call, she started to pack her things.
In the early morning, Ai Ling woke up feeling nauseated, and threw up what she had eaten the night before. Dousing her face with cold water, Ai Ling tried to hold down the waves of sickness that continued to stir her insides, even when she had nothing left to vomit. The pain came and went like serrating pulses of light. She returned to bed and fell back to sleep. When she woke an hour later, she felt much better, returned to her usual self.
With some time to kill before she had to check out at eleven—she wanted to avoid Daniel by all means—Ai Ling decided to go for a swim in the sea. She put on her one-piece and headed down to the beach. The day held the promise of fair weather, the air skin-sobering cool with a hint of a bite, still retaining the memory of the rain. The beach was empty except for a handful of early risers doing their morning exercise.
Putting her towel down on the sand, Ai Ling surveyed the beach from one end to the other: no other swimmer in sight. She stepped to the water line, then plunged straight in, giving herself entirely to the nerve-numbing shock of the cold water. For a few seconds, her body only registered the biting pain that surrounded it before a blossoming sensation of warmth started to spread out as she moved her arms and legs, pushing her body onwards. She swam for a long time without stopping. When she paused to look back at the shore, everything seemed so distant—the town on the coast, the people, the hills that rose in the south. Apart from her sonorous breaths, the sea was silent. With her feet hovering in a colder, deeper part of the water, Ai Ling could envision the lower regions of the sea, the unknown watery abyss where blind creatures swam, hunted and lived out their existence. Ai Ling suddenly felt infinitesimal, disembodied, her heartbeats insignificant against the mass of countless heartbeats that reverberated in the dark, echoing chamber of the sea. Along with this realisation, she also felt a jolt of surprise, as if she had only now been made known of the significance of her life, an experience so brief in its secret, elusive joy.
The morning sun had spread itself across the surface of the sea, which pulsated with light. Ai Ling stayed in the water, floating on her back, her face open to the sky. Her ears, submerged, picked up the clicking sounds of the sea, a rumbling of its interior, beating with life. The sunlight warmed her face. Ai Ling did not know how long she stayed in this position—her mind had slipped into a state of blissful thoughtlessness—when she heard a sharp sound, rising above the clamour of the sea. She lifted her head and turned towards the shore.
Standing at the edge of the water was the boy who had offered her a drink the day before, gesturing wildly. Ai Ling waved back and looked in the water around her and knew the cause of the boy’s excitement. What first looked like a bunch of small, translucent plastic bags discarded into the sea was actually a school of jellyfish, stringy tentacles hanging from the milky dome-like caps of their bodies. They were all around her
. The boy’s piercing voice carried through the air like a siren.
With slow, nimble strokes, Ai Ling made her way carefully between and around the jellyfish, her heart leaping inside her each time she came close to one of the tentacles. Once she was finally clear of them, she pounded her way swiftly through the water, desperate to be back on land. She reached the shore, panting, but the boy was no longer there, only a trail of footsteps in the sand that disappeared further up the beach.
In her ears, Ai Ling could still hear an echo of the boy’s voice, fainter and weaker, until it disappeared completely.
22
CHEE SENG
I change into my old clothes and have a simple breakfast of gruel and salted black beans. Before we set off, the old woman brings me one last bowl of the bitter brew and has me drink it. Carrying the bundle of food she has prepared for me, she leads me out of the compound of the hut, past the furrowed plots of long beans, peas and water spinach, onto the cleared-out path that snakes into the dense forest. I follow her closely. I have no idea where she’s taking me, but I do not ask. We walk without stopping until the sun is hovering above the tree line. We finally exit the forest, the hardened-soil path widening out into a gravel-filled road. Coming to a stop at a clearing, the old woman looks at me. With a firm hand gesture, she tells me to stay put. She points to the end of the road, where it disappears down a slope, and stares in the direction for a few seconds. Then, after taking a last glance at me, she turns and re-enters the forest. I watch as she slips between the trees and vanishes out of sight.
No vehicle appears as I stand by the road, waiting. The day is becoming warmer. The dew on the grass has already dried up. The tall Casuarina trees lining the sides of the road stretch into the distance, the leaves rustling with the occasional breeze. The intermittent bursts of sharp trilling from birds hidden amongst the branches provide the only soundtrack to the quiet surroundings. I stretch my legs to work out the kinks. It has to be late morning now. I pick up the bundle by my feet and, glancing in both directions, decide to take the descending route, down the hill.
“I think it’s this way,” I said, pointing to a branching path that led into a thicket of bushes. We had been walking on the narrow, muddy path for the past twenty minutes and seemed to be heading nowhere. Cody, coming to a stop beside me, glanced at where I was indicating, his face a curtain of sweat.
“You sure?” he asked, taking a bottle of water out from his haversack and passing it to me. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt, leaving dark stains. Since I was the one who had suggested the trek on our fourth date, I could not tell him what was worrying me, that we might be lost.
“Yes, it’ll lead us to the main route that will bring us back to the starting point,” I said.
Cody nodded, took a swig of water and went ahead of me onto the path. Then turning suddenly, he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him. “You smell good when you sweat.” He took a long sniff and kissed my neck.
“Wish I could say the same thing about you,” I said.
“Well, guess you have to get used to it then.” He hugged me, and I could feel the wetness of his shirt against my body, soaking my shirt, touching my skin.
We walked for another three hours to get out of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, having long run out of water and covered with scratches and bites. This incident later became a funny anecdote that Cody would tell our friends over dinners to illustrate the extent he had to go to woo me, that although he had known I had lost the way, he did not have the heart to tell me so.
But would he do it again, he was often asked, a follow-up question, and he would say, turning to me, smiling: maybe, maybe.
The closely clustered trees tower over me, the thick unruly undergrowth edges out onto the cracked tarmac, the long road curves round a bend before emerging again. My thoughts slip in and out of the crevices of my mind, gaining no real purchase. The sun is now at its zenith, blinding. I take off my shirt and tie it around my waist. My skin feels taut, as if I might burst out of it anytime, like a snake shedding its old skin.
My pace has slowed considerably, and I can feel blisters mushrooming on my torn soles. I glance back occasionally for signs of movement, but there’s nothing, only a long grey stretch of road traversing the landscape, winding through the trees. Two dark smudges move through the sky in unison—eagles? One of them lets out a doleful cry, dips low and disappears into the treetops, while the other cuts a straight path ahead. I watch as it flies beyond the hills and vanishes into a bank of low-lying clouds.
For the first three months I was dating Cody, I was also casually seeing another guy on the side. Andy was twenty-eight, and worked as a senior data analyst in a market research firm; we met through a mutual friend. He was fine with the arrangement, as he had just got out of a six-year relationship and wasn’t looking for anything serious. Because nothing was asked besides mutual pleasure, we enjoyed the sessions we had, with some lasting up to three, four hours. Right from the start, because I knew what I was in for, I did not expect much from him, and was wary of making any unnecessary demands on his time. We met when we were free or bored or horny, and we left the rest of our lives opaque to each other. There was nothing else to hold us together, and we were okay with what we had.
So when Cody asked whether I was seeing anyone else over brunch one morning, I was caught off-guard. I studied his face to see whether his question was asked out of plain interest or suspicion. I could not sense the intention behind his expression.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“Just curious. You’re always checking your mobile phone,” he said, biting into his kaya toast, a light dusting of bread crust falling to the table top.
“It’s a bad habit, I guess. Okay, I promise not to check my phone so much,” I said.
“No, no. It’s okay with me. I’m just wondering, that’s all. So? Are you seeing anyone else?”
I smiled. Cody’s look was a mix of anticipation and curiosity.
“Nobody serious. I’m ending it anyway.”
“Oh. Who is he?”
“Just a friend. Well, a friend of a friend, actually.”
“You like him?”
“He’s okay. But he’s not you.”
“Ah, trying to flatter me?” Cody smiled, looking like he wanted to say more, but in the end he refrained. I deleted Andy’s number from my phone and did not answer his calls or messages after that. He persisted for a while, and finally I had to meet him over coffee to explain.
“So that’s why you are avoiding me like a plague? You just have to tell me straight. I’ll understand,” said Andy.
“I just thought perhaps it’s better to tell you face to face.”
“So this is it? You are serious about this guy?”
“He’s decent, and I like him.”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“A few months.”
“You should have told me earlier. At least I would have some time to look around for another fuck buddy.” Andy laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter.
“You will find one soon enough, with your looks.”
“I don’t know. It’s not easy to find someone who is compatible, you know.”
“You will, I’m very sure.”
After coffee, Andy offered to drive me home. Coming to the block of flats where I lived, Andy pressed me into my seat. “For old time’s sake,” he said.
“No, better not, people will see.”
“Not that it has bothered you before. Come on.”
“No,” I said, but Andy was already lifting my shirt, teasing my nipple with his tongue. I dropped my hands to my sides. Andy unzipped my jeans and reached in, stroking my cock against my underwear.
“You’ll miss me. You sure you want to give this up?” Andy whispered into my ear, grasping my cock with an assertive firmness. And when he kissed me, dipping his tongue into my mouth, I relented. He bent down and took my cock into his mouth, glancing up at me, silently
commanding my attention. When I was about to come, he pushed my cock deeper into his mouth. Unable to hold back, I shot my load, and he swallowed demonstratively.
“You sure you want to give this up?” Andy asked again.
Tattered images cloud my mind as I trudge, my pace slowing to a snail’s crawl, the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun dulling my thoughts. Chafing against my worn-out shoes, the blisters on my feet and ankles have swelled to white, soggy patches, leaking blood and pus. Every little movement takes Herculean effort, even keeping my head up to check what’s ahead of me. The bundle I’m carrying on my shoulder feels like a bag full of concrete blocks, digging into my flesh.
Feeling faint, I amble towards the shade of a tall tree with sprawling roots, and collapse in a heap onto the grassy ground. I close my eyes against the shifting light filtering through the tightly-knitted canopy of leaves. Something hard and sharp jabs my shoulder, but I’m too exhausted to move away. My breaths are slow and mechanical, my mouth a burning furnace. I fumble for the bottle of water in the bundle, remove the cap, and pour the contents over my face. The water runs into my mouth and nose; I gag and throw up everything that I’ve drunk.
Everything starts to slip away from me—I imagine my body slowly disintegrating into the dark soil, sinking into the depths.
Lying in bed in the dark, Cody and I talked about death, the kind of death we envisioned for ourselves.
“Something quick and fast, definitely,” Cody said.
“Like what?” I said.
“Like a car crash or a sudden accident, something totally out of the blue.”
“So drama, so David Lynch-y.”
“Ha, but without the sexual fetishism. Yeah, that way there is no suffering at all, gone, just like that.”
“In a blaze of glory?” I said. Cody’s laughter echoed in the room. “For me, it’s simple. I want to die surrounded by my loved ones.”