by O Thiam Chin
On one of her walks, she had visited her old secondary school and stood at the rusty gates, looking in at the students in the compound; she could not recognise any of the teachers, or spot the casuarina tree where she had spent her recesses with Peng Soon. From what she had heard from her mother, Peng Soon was now a teacher.
In the old school? she had asked.
No, in Kuala Lumpur, in an international school, her mother said.
She had not asked about Hai Feng. The provision shop was still there, at the junction leading out of the kampung. She had peeked into it a few times and seen a short, middle-aged man standing behind the glass counter. Was it Hai Feng’s father? She would sneak away just as the man looked up and noticed her, raising his black thick-rimmed spectacles.
Sometimes, sitting at a roadside food stall, Yifan would glance at a face, finding it familiar, and wonder whether it was someone she knew back in school. She waited for the moment of recognition, which unfortunately never came, before turning away.
A soft knock on the door: her mother’s voice, alerting her to breakfast. Yifan removed a face towel from the rack and started her day.
In the kitchen, her mother had laid out breakfast: mugs of coffee sweetened with condensed milk, steamed red bean buns, a plate of bee hoon. Yifan sipped the hot Milo; her appetite had been erratic since her return, dormant at times, occasionally flaring into irrational spates of cravings: pork ribs soup, mee rebus, fried oyster omelette.
Eat, eat, while it’s hot, her mother said, pushing the plate of steamed buns towards her. Yifan picked one up and nibbled at the edge.
What are your plans today? her mother asked.
Nothing, the same, I guess, just walk around, Yifan said. They ate in silence.
Later, while they were washing the dishes at the concrete wash trough, her mother said: You can tell me if you have problems. A pause. Then she added: Stay as long as you like. Don’t be in a hurry to leave. Yifan nodded, and moved away from her mother.
That afternoon, as Yifan came back from her walk in a different part of town, where the old fruit plantations used to be, her mother hurried out of the house, a look of fazed concern on her face. There’s someone who was looking for you, she said. I told him you’re out, and he said he will come back later.
Who? Yifan asked.
He told me his name, but I can’t remember now. A tall guy, with spectacles. He looks quite pleasant.
Yifan tried, and failed, to keep her face neutral. A look of alarm must have crawled onto her features, which clouded her mother’s in turn. Where did he go? she asked.
Not sure, maybe somewhere nearby, I told him you’ll be back soon.
Yifan quickly found an excuse to escape into her room. Sitting on the bed, she suddenly found it hard to breathe. She got up and started pacing the shrinking room, her mind stubbornly vacant except for a single overriding thought: Go, leave now. There was still a narrow opening to leave all this behind.
Yifan opened the bedroom door, slipped down the corridor, and left through the back entrance to the kitchen. Sunlight poured from the open sky, and the lusty chirping of crickets filled the hot, stifling air. At Yifan’s approach, a brood of chickens burst into short manic leaps of flight, scattering in different directions.
Moving with a steady pace along the hardened path, Yifan emerged from the cool, grey canopy of the forest into the clearing, her vision momentarily overwhelmed by sunlight. In the day, the river brimmed with unrestrained life, glistening with sheets of bright hard scales. Peering into the water, Yifan could see the sandy bottom, soft and brown, dappled by flashing gems of light and shadow. She would not go any further, she knew. She sat down in the shade of the nearest tree, looking out to the hills in the distance.
She would have to wait now. For something to happen—but what? What did she know? What had she understood of the choices she’d made? For all the different lives she had lived and the countless stories she had told, there had never been a point where she had felt fully understood by anyone. She would be present as one of her many selves, playing a role in a story of her making. And yet she remained almost invisible, barely grasped by the men who loved her, those who strove to lay their claims on her. Who was she to them exactly—and did they ever really, truly, know her? What had they seen in her, this woman made in their own estimation, moulded out of the bits and fragments she had allowed them to know? A thing of many forms and many faces, perhaps? And, if so, who had they really loved then—which Yifan had they fallen in love with?
And, in the end, did their love matter at all?
From a distance, a voice called out a name. Yifan heard it. But she did not turn to find out where it was coming from. The name came again, louder, insistent. A presence now—a figure standing in the clearing—heavy, physical, singular, coming closer, hovering next to her.
Yifan closed her eyes, and took a long breath.
Life, again, touching.
Acknowledgements
Endless gratitude and thanks to the following people:
My family: Pa, Ma, Siew Yen, Harry, Thiam Teck and Agustiniwati. Literally for everything, every single thing.
My four brave and beautiful foxes: Ryan, Gabriel, Kristine, Gareth. Go wild, roam free, explore, discover, you little beasts!
My friends: Kok Wei, Jenny, Yew Pin, Angeline, Alvin, Fiona, Gavin Ng, Yvonne Lee, Eric Soo. For sustaining me in spirit and kindness over the long years.
Jocelyn Lau: for reading earlier drafts and providing invaluable feedback.
The lovely folks at Epigram Books: Edmund for his steadfast belief, Jason Erik Lundberg for his generous support and guidance, and JY Yang for saving the book, word by word (you’re a godsend! I owe you big). Also, a hearty nod to Winston and Andy for their hard work, and to Qin Yi for the gorgeous book cover.
About the author
O Thiam Chin is the winner of the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015, for his first novel, Now That’s It’s Over. He is also the author of five collections of short fiction: Free-Falling Man (2006), Never Been Better (2009), Under The Sun (2010), The Rest Of Your Life and Everything That Comes With It (2011) and Love, Or Something Like Love (2013, shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction).
His short stories have appeared in Mānoa, World Literature Today, The International Literary Quarterly, Asia Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Kyoto Journal, The Jakarta Post, The New Straits Times, Asiatic and Esquire (Singapore). His short fiction was also selected for the first two volumes of the Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series.
O was an honorary fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program in 2010, a recipient of the NAC Young Artist Award in 2012, and has been thrice longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He appears frequently at writers festivals in Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.
WINNER OF THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
THE GATEKEEPER
by 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, where 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
FINALISTS FOR THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
STATE OF EMERGENCY
by 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.
The struggles against communism may have started decades ago, but it has left deep scars across the region. State of Emergency traces the leftist movements of Singapore and Malaysia from the 1940s to the present day, centring on a family trying to navigate the choppy political currents of the region.
FINALISTS FOR THE 2016 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
SURROGATE PROTOCOL
by THAM CHENG-E
Landon Lock has lived many lifetimes, but his memory spans only days. Because Landon is no ordinary barista.
Danger brews as Landon struggles to piece reality together through the fog of amnesia: a mysterious organisation bent on hunting him down, a man called John who claims to be a friend, and women from Landon’s past who have come to haunt him. As the organisation closes in on Landon, he finds himself being increasingly backed into a corner. Battling his unreliable memory, Landon is forced to make a decision on who to trust.
The Epigram Books Fiction Prize promotes contemporary creative writing and rewards excellence in Singaporean literature. The richest literary prize in Singapore is awarded to the Singaporean, permanent resident or Singapore-born author for the best manuscript of a full length, original and unpublished novel written in the English language.
For more information, please visit EBFP.EPIGRAMBOOKS.SG