Ode to Broken Things
Page 19
“I know.”
She looked into the murky darkness of the water and sighed,
“You are too young for me.”
“Only by two years! Your parents have fourteen years between them.”
“And they are very unhappy.” She shook her head, her black hair blotting the darkness deeper. “Jay, I will forget this conversation; we both will. But I will never stop loving the father of this child.”
He drew into the innards of his fury. He knew he had to destroy this love. He said, “Your love is so unthinkable that Fatherfucker isn’t even a word in any of the languages I speak.”
When she rowed him back to shore, telling him she needed to be alone, he had expected her to come back. They sat together at that shore, he and the Sylheti, until the other man hawked his phlegm into the bushes and said that she could go to hell, she was probably fucking some sucker somewhere, she was such a slut. Jay stayed, sleeping off in the humming night, until the commotion woke him up. When they dredged out her body, every bit of her was waterlogged and swollen, except for the demon’s teeth.
He looked across at Agni in her white sari. Yes, that was what Shanti had become, whitewashed of all colour.
Jay peered at the mansions of the rich surrounding this property. He could find no correlation between his memory and the reality of this new Malaysia. Across the road, the strings of fairylights edging the stalls of hawkers twinkled brightly. With the ambient lighting casting long shadows into the foliage of the huge mansions, this town looked both gawky and beautiful, like a pre-teen playing at being a woman.
He would take Agni away from all this awkwardness at once – this country’s terrible growing pains, to his holiday cottage in Port Townsend with its open views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca flanked by the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. The white bell-shaped Madrone flowers would be changing to berries now, lighting up the trees with small reddish-orange flames. The green cones of the silver fir would be turning deep purple. He could feel the fresh autumn winds already, and he knew Agni would love that garden. He would take her away from the moist rumblings of every evening, the reek of dankness from an undergrowth fetid with moisture.
He would have to call Colonel S and tell him of his decision. Colonel S would not understand, he anticipated that.
Even Jay didn’t understand why Agni had become so important to him in such a short time. He didn’t want to analyse this. It was enough to know she would make something whole, something he had been carrying around broken for a long time. And that he could try to make her whole.
Jay felt sixteen again, rehearsing the lines that would change his life. He fingered the demon-teeth pendant. He should begin with that. Approach Agni, and say, Do you know what this is? With typical arrogance, she would reply, No, but I am sure you will tell me.
Jay looked down at his sleep-creased clothes and smiled in anticipation. He would hand her the demon teeth and say, This once belonged to your mother.
Then he would tell her that when a history is buried, it doesn’t remain under the earth forever. The muddy river flows, the silt moves, and the past is spit up like batu lintar, the teeth of the Thunder Demons – twice as powerful, twice as malevolent.
Forty-four
It was after five in the evening when Agni awoke after an exhausted sleep. Ranjan and Mridula’s bungalow, originally designed for the large retinues of the plantation bosses, bulged at the seams. Children spilled over into the main living room, where they slept on a long bed, tangled limbs in disarray on the floor.
The mourning period would go on for eleven days. Religious bhajans would be sung every evening, and vegetarian food served.
People came and went; Agni couldn’t figure out family from close friends any more. Her eyes felt gummy with fatigue. Life without Abhik? She had never had to deal with the possibility.
Her dreams were fragmented and confused. She dreamt of water nurturing a translucent baby. She dreamt of nurses who said, You had tears in your eyes. She did not want to sleep again.
Even the children were totally subdued. Agni watched a group playing together under the shade of a giant Rain Tree. It was late evening, and the leaves of the tree had already started to fold, but the children played on with fists outstretched: One, two, zom! One fist became a bird, swiftly swallowing the water cupped in the palm of the losing child. The winner didn’t shout in triumph, but furrowed his brow and carried on, as if the game was played in deadly earnest.
She touched the flowers that had arrived from Greg, heavy in an oversized rattan basket, bearing the words, I am so sorry about Abhik. Love, Greg.
Agni searched the periphery of the crowd for Jay. She hadn’t seen him for a long time, but she knew he had come to the funeral.
Her head ached. At the airport, the real threat of terrorism shaped the thoughts of many of the employees dealing with security, beading into the everyday a tinge of panic. Yet, she had not expected the terror to strike so close to home.
She checked her cellphone then put it away. It was stupid to call Rohani about this now, but she hadn’t had the time to tell her about Colonel S turning up with Jay. The trail was so unclear that it probably would not warrant an investigation of any kind; everyone knew about Colonel S and his role in the Tibetan woman’s murder but, so far, he had managed to stay above the law. Agni would make sure Abhik’s murder didn’t go unpunished.
She looked at Jay sitting alone. No matter what it took, she would get the truth out of him. Her grandmother’s discomfort whenever she saw Jay, his relationship with her mother Shanti, his connection with Colonel S – Jay seemed to be key to the jigsaw puzzle of her life. No matter how repugnant he was, she would have to work on him.
A sudden thought hit her: What if the bomb at the airport was a rehearsal? Only a dry run for a larger, deadlier plot? How much time did she have to gain Jay’s trust?
Her thoughts were driving her crazy, and she shook her head to clear it. She would go back to work tomorrow and start with what she could control. She would begin by checking out the Integrated Operations Network thoroughly. Sitting here wouldn’t bring Abhik back. Nothing would. They had not made their relationship public when he had been alive, but now, her white widow’s sari told everyone what had remained unsaid.
Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered Abhik dissecting the national anthem. She heard him singing the lines, tanah tumpahnya darahku. This land, too, had a spirit that was thirsty for blood, just like any other nation. Spilt blood was the litmus test of loyalty. She looked at end of her white sari, fluttering in the breeze like a surrendering flag. I have made my sacrifices.
Abhik had been right. There was so much to be done in this country. When so many things could go wrong at this juncture, she knew she could not mourn for long. She reminded herself of a procrastinated promise, of being a child of this soil, and of making it her own. I, too, am a bumiputri.
There were too many divisions in this land; too much neglect of a shared human history. Perhaps the way to right the wrongs was to start from within. She had to believe that the bombs wouldn’t win. She paced silently, chanting an ancient mantra that her grandmother had given her in her childhood:
May there be peace in heaven
May there be peace in the sky
May there be peace on earth
May there be peace in the water
May there be peace in all
May that peace, real peace, be mine.
Author’s note
This book had a long gestation period, and I have too many people in too many countries to thank. My deepest gratitude goes to the Man Asian Literary Prize judges who long-listed the unpublished manuscript for the prize in 2009, and to Divya Dubey (Gyaana Books), publisher extraordinaire, for first believing in this book and treating it with so much love and respect. My gratitude also to Anna Sathiah and Julia Gardner, who read very early drafts in Singapore with both encouragement and interest, and to my writing group in Amsterdam (Maria, Kai, Laura, David, Ute,
Lisa, Tim… thanks!), as well as Lisa Lau in the UK and Jim Phillips in the US. A significant portion of the first draft was completed while I was at the Centrum Foundation in Washington State as a writer-in-residence from February to March 2003, and I am deeply grateful to the Centrum staff. Preeta Samarasan and Alfian Sa’at provided some valuable insights into the historical-political landscape of Malaysia at the editing stage; Mishi Saran gave valuable editing tips; Mita Kapur gave so generously of her time and the Siyahi expertise that whatever I say in thanks will seem inadequate.
To my Shanghai cheerleaders, Riva Ganguly Das, Trista Baldwin, Tan Zheng, Peoy Leng, Kunal Sinha, and Indira Ravindran; I am so very grateful.
Fellow Malaysian writers who urged me beyond self-censorship to write this story include Bernice Chauly, Amir Muhammad, Kee Thuan Chye, Dain Said, Uthaya Sankar, Chuah Guat Eng, and always, Sharon Bakar.
Details about life in Malaya during the war and emergency years were adapted from: War and Memory in Malaysia and Singapore edited by P. Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong; Andrew Herbert’s Who won the Malayan Emergency?; and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: A Malaysian Perspective published by the Netaji Centre, Kuala Lumpur. The following books shed some light on the complexities of Malaysian society and politics: Goh Cheng Teik’s Malaysia: Beyond Communal Politics; Richard Clutter-buck’s Conflict and violence in Singapore and Malaysia 1945–1983; Wazir Jahan Karim’ edited work Emotions of Culture: A Malay Perspective; Myths of the Malay ruling class by Sharifah Maznah Syed Omar; and Mohtar bin H Md Dom’s Malay Superstitions and Beliefs.
For the historical background of Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, the following works were invaluable: Sinnappah Arasaratnam’s Indians in Malaysia and Singapore; Rajeswary Ampalavanar’s The Indian Minority and Political Change in Malaya 1945–1957; Kernial Singh Sandhu’s Indians in Malaya: Some Aspects of their Immigration and Settlement; Amarjit Kaur’s, North Indians in Malaya: A Study of their Economic, Social and Political Activities, with Special Reference to Selangor, 1870s–1940s; Recollections: People and Places, published by the Oral History Department, Singapore; Singapore’s Little India: Past, Present and Future by Sharon Siddique & Nirmala Puru Shottam; and Gretchen Liu’s Singapore: A Pictorial History 1819–2000.
The following poems have been adapted from these sources: “I am utterly enchanted” from Kenneth Rexroth’s Sacramental Acts: Love Poems; “I use the charm of love, my love for you” from Wazir Jahan Karim’s Emotions of Culture.
Despite all the research into this book, this is ultimately a work of fiction and does not pretend to be otherwise; as such, it aims for verisimilitude rather than any strict historical accuracy.
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Copyright © Dipika Mukherjee 2016
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