Shadow Play

by Barbara Ismail

  “I don’t know.” Rubiah was honest. “I don’t know what I’d think after all is said and done. “Chuka diminum pagi hari, vinegar drunk early in the morning: being made a second wife is a bitter drink to swallow. Who knows what it could drive you to do?”

  They walked in silence for some moments, each contemplating the private hell of a husband suddenly appearing with a second wife. “We should see both sets of parents, as long as we’re here,” Maryam pulled herself together. “It can’t be too difficult to find them.”

  The stopped at a kedai runcit on the side of the main road, where a small group of men sat on the tiny bench at the counter. Maryam and Rubiah smiled at the owner, washing the used coffee cups. “Excuse me, we aren’t from here, and we’re looking for Che Ghani’s parents. Do you know where they live?”

  The owner looked up from his cups and saucers and gave them a long look. “The late Ghani?” They nodded. “Why?”

  “Well,” began Maryam, “we’re helping the police, you might say, looking into this unfortunate occurrence.”

  “Helping the police?”

  “Yes, Abang,” Rubiah moved in. “You know how it is. It’s so difficult for people to talk to the police, and at a time like this, of course, you don’t want to make things even more difficult for them, isn’t that true? It’s so much easier to talk to us, you see, two Kelantanese people, not official, just trying to help.”

  He put his hands on the counter. “So tell me, Kak, why the police let you do this?” His grammar and his accent were noticeably coarser than their own.

  Rubiah was insulted. She’d offered such a smooth and polite speech, and she was interrogated as though she weren’t a well-dressed and well-spoken Mak Cik. She unconsciously rearranged her headscarf to make sure her earrings and necklaces showed to advantage, and in the bright sunlight they were blinding, to show this man who he was dealing with.

  “Sometimes, Abang, even the smartest people need help, and if they’re really smart, they try to find the right person to the job.” She shook her wrist slightly so her bangles tinkled softly. “We are the right people and, of course, we are perfectly ready to help.”

  The man looked back and forth at the two of them, registering their dress, their jewellery and their natural imperiousness. He was slow to acknowledge his defeat. “I’ve never heard of that,” he grumbled. “I’m just trying to make sure no one bothers the family: it’s a painful time for them. People coming from outside; I don’t want to tell you where they live and then you’ll disturb them.”

  “Disturb them?” Maryam asked, speaking more softly as she became more irritated. “Do we really look as though we came out here “to enjoy ourselves disturbing them? God forbid!

  “And so, Abang, I ask your help, where can I find them?”

  “Alright,” he ended ungraciously. “The house toward to end of the alley, on the left,” he pointed with his chin. “Over there.”

  Thanking him sweetly, they walked down the narrow opening between two houses, shaking their heads in contempt. The nerve of him, treating them like teenaged girls out to make mischief.

  Ghani’s parents’ house was easily identified by a very pretty older woman sitting on the porch with two small children. The children were playing in the shade as their grandmother sat silently watching them.

  “Hello,” Maryam called from the bottom of the steps. The grandmother looked at her dully, not even rousing herself to a smile. She had a finely sculpted face, with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes, and her hair was pepper and salt: what people called rambut dua macam, or two kinds of hair, black and grey. Ghani must have gotten his looks from his mother, Maryam decided, remembering the wedding picture she’d just seen. Ghani’s mother nodded at Maryam, not answering. Maryam pursued her introduction.

  “Kak! I am Kak Maryam, and this is Kak Rubiah.” They both smiled. “It was at my house that this so unfortunate … thing … well, tragedy happened, during the performance. We are helping the police, Kak, and asking some questions. I’m so sorry to bother you.”

  They waited for her reply. It was hot and unshaded where they stood, and they were beginning to perspire. She continued to look at them, and after what seemed to be several minutes, but was probably much less, she said “Yes? At your house?”

  “Yes Kak,” Maryam answered vigorously, anxious to be out of the sun, “at my house. And we’re looking into it. Can we talk to you?” It was as close as Maryam could come to asking for an invitation without being terribly rude.

  “Come up,” the woman answered dully, remembering her manners. “Please, get out of the sun.” She stood up to greet them and disappeared into the house to make some coffee, gesturing for her guests to make themselves comfortable on the porch. It was so cool and dark out of the blazing sun: it took a few moments for their eyes to adjust. Ghani’s two children sat solemnly watching them, their eyes large, their hair pushed back from their foreheads and some cooling white powder rubbed on their cheeks and foreheads. Rubiah tried to coax them closer, but they wriggled farther away and she let them be.

  Ghani’s mother came out with a plate of cakes, no doubt brought by the neighbours, and coffee. She served them from the tray and urged them to eat and drink. She ran her hand over her face and watched them.

  “Aren’t you drinking, Kak?” Maryam asked.

  She smiled silently and shook her head. Maryam introduced herself and Rubiah, offering the most pertinent details, like what they sold in the market and which kampong they hailed from.

  Their hostess nodded slightly, and Maryam feared she would never speak. “It’s nice that you’re doing this,” she said quietly. “I am Kak Hasnah, and that was my son. These are his children,” she made a sweeping gesture towards them. “I still can’t believe it. Poor boy. Too many problems with women,” she unrolled some homemade cigarettes from her sarong, just as Maryam so often did, and she recognized Hasnah as a kindred spirit. Hasnah spread her cigarettes on the porch and each woman took one and lit up.

  “Always with women. I worried that it would catch up with him in the end. I told him so. His father told him too, but you know how young men are. All men, really. They don’t think woman trouble is trouble until it’s too late, and that’s just what happened to my son.”

  “Is he your only son?” Maryam asked, grateful that Hasnah was now talking.

  “Yes, the only one. I have three girls, also, but Ghani was the oldest and the only boy. I’m glad the rest are girls. Less trouble and more sensible.”

  “Kids,” Rubiah interjected. “They can break your heart.” All three mothers sat silent for a moment, considering the truth of this.

  “Did you know about his new, um, that is …?” Maryam was strangely reluctant to come to the point.

  “That he got married again?” Hasnah asked. “Of course, I knew once she showed up here. How could he be so stupid? This girl, this Faouda, showed up right at his house, to his wife. Can you believe it? He came running over here with her after Aisha threw them out, or her out anyway. Late at night, woke us up. ‘Are you kidding?’ I asked him. ‘You married someone in Kuala Krai? A second wife? What in God’s name do you need a second wife for?’

  “Naturally, Ghani had nothing to say.” Suddenly, Hasnah seeing the two children listening with interest, turned to the inside of her house and called “Ijan! Come over here and take the kids inside. They could use a nap, right?” she smiled at them. Ijan came to the door and smiled shyly, gathering the children with her to take inside. “My youngest,” explained Hasnah. “Still in school.”

  “Such a pretty girl,” enthused Rubiah. “She looks just like her mother – salin tak tumpah, not even a drop spilled.”

  “Thanks,” said Hasnah shortly. She tapped the ash over the railing. “Anyway, Ghani couldn’t really explain. ‘I didn’t know she’d come here,’ he tells me. ‘You really married her,’ I said, ‘and you didn’t think she’d show up here?’

  Oh, I was furious, I tell you, and so was my hu
sband. ‘What have you done?’ his father asked him. And Ghani had nothing to say. He needed a place for this girl to stay; it was so late at night.

  ‘Not here,’ my husband told him. ‘She can sleep by the side of the road for all I care. Why don’t you divorce her right now?’ he asked him. The girl starts sniffling. It was like TV here, shouting and all in the middle of the night. I could have killed Ghani myself right then. Two little kids, you’ve seen my grandchildren, and you marry someone else?”

  Maryam and Rubiah clicked their tongues and commiserated. Men.

  “Ya, well then, he left with this girl. I think he might have gone over to his auntie’s house, my husband’s sister. She lives over there,” she gestured vaguely away from the main road, “with her family and my husband’s mother.

  “Maybe Ghani tried to talk his grandmother into keeping her for one night. But let me tell you, this girl was angry when she left here. She thought Ghani would be thrilled to see her, and I guess she thought his family would celebrate when she got up here, but instead, I told her she ought to go right back to where she came from.

  “What could my son have been thinking? To do that to your own wife. You know what we say about a second wife: cuka diminum pagi hari. It’s a bitter drink to swallow.” She stared at the trees outside the house

  “Our proverbs tell us a lot about life, if we listen to them,” Maryam agreed. “That’s why we say biar anak mati, jangan adat mati: let your children die, but not tradition.” Maryam pulled herself up short. She was horrified at her lack of tact: to talk about dead children, even as a proverb. She blushed scarlet, and put her hands together under her chin. “Oh Kak Hasnah, I didn’t think. I didn’t mean …”

  “I know,” Hasnah answered tiredly. “It’s just a proverb.”

  “No, I’m so sorry. What must you think of me?”

  She shook her head. “You mustn’t worry. I know what you meant, and you’re right. We can learn a lot from the old ways.”

  Maryam cleared her throat to begin again, admonishing herself to watch her tongue. “It’s so difficult, Kak Hasnah,” Maryam sympathized, but continued. “She thought for a moment. “Ghani left the day after that to play, didn’t he? At my house?”

  Hasnah nodded. “He did. That girl wasn’t around. I think she may have gone home to Kuala Krai right away. That’s what Ghani told me, that he divorced her with one talak, and she went home. Aisha came over with him, so it looked to me as though it was all right.

  ‘You’re sure she’s gone?’ I asked him when I could get him alone for a minute, ‘You’re sure this is over?’ He said it was. He said he was going to register his talak in Kota Bharu, but I don’t know if he did or not. I don’t know if he ever had the time to do it.” She sighed, and sat silently.

  “Did Aisha ever go to visit him when he played?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’d keep the kids when she did. You know, they were close. It was a good marriage. Maybe she went to check up on him too, I don’t know. She didn’t stay all night or anything; there wasn’t any place for her to be. She’d come home late and sleep here with the kids, then take them home in the morning.”

  “How about last week?” Maryam asked.

  “You think she went to your place to kill Ghani? She didn’t.”

  “Was she there?” Maryam pressed.

  “Are you going to ask the rest of the troupe whether she turned up there? Is that what this is about?”

  “No, no,” soothed Maryam, trying to slide away from an argument. “Just asking.”

  “I’m tired,” Hasnah announced. “I’ve got to look after my grandkids now.” She stood up and tried to fix a polite smile on her face, but failed. Maryam and Rubiah thanked her profusely, and backed away down the alley.

  “She was there,” Maryam told Rubiah as they walked away.

  Rubiah nodded. “Of course. The other musicians will confirm it, I guess. Do you want to see the auntie? Maybe she knows where what’s-her-name, Faouda, went.”

  Ghani’s auntie and her elderly mother were busily working in the kitchen when Maryam and Rubiah appeared. Their house was a traditional one, built on stilts in the front, with a ground level kitchen in the back. There was no running water in the area, and two pottery jars of water sat on the floor next to a charcoal brazier and a large plastic bucket of rice. The younger woman was slicing onions, and the older one shelling petai, ‘jungle beans’ in large pods.

  They looked up to see their well-dressed visitors and quickly stood, flustered to be visited in their working clothes: faded sarong, the younger woman in a T-shirt and the older in a well-worn cotton blouse.

  “We’re sorry to walk in on you like this,” began Maryam, wishing, for the first time in her life that she was wearing less jewellery. The younger woman stood up, vigorously brushing her hands against her sarong, and whipped the dishtowel off her shoulder. She smiled shyly.

  Maryam introduced herself and Rubiah, and the woman’s face fell. “I am Kak Nurhayati, and this is my mother,” she said stiffly. Her mother watched them all without rising, her face now expressionless. “I’m Ghani’s aunt.” Nurhayati added. She watched Maryam without moving.

  Maryam cleared her throat and once more explained herself. “Kak Hasnah said that Ghani may have brought, um, that girl, to stay here,” Rubiah broke a long silence. “We thought that might be important, you know.”

  Ghani’s grandmother made the decision to speak. “That horrible girl. I told him,” She said, ostensibly addressing her daughter, “I said, ‘what have you done, you stupid boy! Are you leaving your family for her?’”

  She turned for a moment and tore apart a pod, sending petai spattering over the ground. “‘Just keep her here for the night, Nenek,’ he said, ‘I’ll send her home to Kuala Krai tomorrow.’ ‘You will, will you?’ I told him. ‘You think she’ll go? She came all the way up here to find you and make your family miserable.’

  He told me he was sending her back the next day, so I said I’d keep her for that night. But I told him, ‘Don’t fool around with me, Ghani. Right after breakfast she’s out of here, I mean it. If you don’t come back here for her, I’ll push her out onto the road.’ Didn’t I, Yati?” She turned to her daughter. “I didn’t want any part of it, but I didn’t want him wandering around all night with her trailing behind him complaining for the entire kampong to hear.”

  “She wasn’t happy,” explained Nurhayati.

  Her mother snorted. “Not happy? I’ll say. She was furious: seperti ular berbelit-belit, like a snake rising over its coils.”

  Maryam and Rubiah had squatted down in front of the older woman and, at this point, Nurhayati did too. Maryam produced a pack of Mamat’s Rothman’s cigarettes, and offered one to each woman. Nurhayati haltingly accepted one, and her mother reached behind her to pull out the ingredients for a betel quid.

  “I prefer this,” she explained, smoothening out the leaf and cutting off slices of the sireh nut. “I never got used to cigarettes; too modern for me.” She smiled; revealing the blackened teeth and red gums of the betel chewer, and methodically added some tobacco and lime to the tapak sireh she rolled up and stuck into her cheek next to her back molars. This completed, she continued.

  “She started to complain to me, after Ghani left, but I told her straight out, ‘Don’t talk to me about Ghani. He’s my grandson. What do you think you’re doing here? You just go to sleep and get ready to leave in the morning, you.’” She chewed placidly and then spit over her shoulder. “And loud? I was so embarrassed. Everyone could hear our business, especially in the middle of the night like that. Aduh, what a disaster!”

  Nurhayati suddenly remembered her manners. “Tea, coffee?” she asked rising, but Maryam and Rubiah begged her to sit down instead. “Don’t trouble yourself, please! We’ve just had tea at your brother’s house. Really, we don’t want to bother you!”

  She allowed herself to be convinced, and squatted on her heels, holding the cigarette between her thumb and forefin
ger and taking a deep drag. She took over the narrative from her mother, who was for the moment immersed in her betel. “I gave her a cup of coffee in the morning. Ghani came over early to get her, and when I saw him, I gave him a smack on the side of the head. Idiot! Too good-looking for his own good.” His grandmother cackled sadly at that.

  “Always been a problem. Anyway, he took her with him, and that was it. I hear he was over at his parents’ house later in the day, so I guess he got rid of her and went home to make up with his wife. We never saw him after that.” Both she and her mother became silent, hearing the finality in those words.

  “Never again,” echoed his grandmother, rubbing her eyes with a dishtowel.

  “Find out who did it,” his aunt urged them. “He didn’t deserve it.”

  Maryam nodded. “He didn’t,” she said. “Did she go right back to Kuala Krai?”

  Nurhayati shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her again, and I never asked anyone. How would we know? Once she left Tawang, she could have gone anywhere.” She thought for a moment. “I think she killed him.”

  Her mother gave her a searching look. “Probably. Who else would want him dead?”

  Maryam did not want to interrupt, but could imagine that Aisha might want to kill him herself for bringing home another wife. Still, Aisha was a girl from here, surrounded by her family, and this other wife was from far away and no one knew her. It would be infinitely more convenient if she were the killer, since no one Maryam ever met would be very sorry about it. Indeed, it would be an object lesson in second marriages and being far too forward for Malay courtesy, and would no doubt be passed down from mother to daughter for years to come.

  “You don’t know anything about where she might live in Kuala Krai, do you? Did she say anything about it?” Maryam probed.

  Nenek shook her head. “She didn’t say much after I finished talking to her, let me tell you.” Maryam could well believe it. “She said something about living a little outside of town, didn’t she, Yati? Let me think. I know she said something.” She spat again and frowned slightly as she thought.